Unexpected Convergence
by coldqueen
Summary: The trio reunite after three years apart, and definite changes have happened. Discover Fuu's secret, Mugen's determination, and Jin's heart. There's a couple here, but I'm not telling. COMPLETE
1. Black Gold Blues

I've got two other stories active right now, but I'm feeling the urge to write Samurai Champloo. I partly blame 3jane, the author of _Nenju_ and a spin-off of that, for inspiring me/driving me insane/inspiring this story.

This is for her.

* * *

A/N All song titles come from songs sung by Laura Viers, a great singer. Ironically, the song this chapter takes its title from, isn't really blues. At all. Just a little fact for you.

* * *

**Chapter One: Black Gold Blues**

_Bird of prey  
Gonna float away  
To a feather cloud formation  
I'm gonna dig  
For pretty and strange  
Gonna open me up  
A black gold vein

* * *

_

Perhaps if she called to them, and told them her secret they'd stay with her. Did she really want to use pain to hold the two men to her? As Fuu watched Jin and Mugen walk in opposite directions, both from each other and from her, she couldn't find the cowardice in her to use the information she contained against them.

The guilt they both carried was clear. Guilt for her sake. Fuu could've used their pity. She could have used their disdain. She even could have, and had, use their hunger against them. For life, for food, for the land, she'd used all those hungers against them on their journey. She'd used them, period. She felt no guilt for what she'd done on her journey to get here, to this place. She'd done what she felt she had to.

That didn't mean it came without consequences. She had taken all the consequences that passed her way and continued to bear their brunt. Fuu studied the hard backs of the two men before her, quickly receding into the distance. From behind, they appeared much the same. The same air of confidence. Mugen was lanky bordering on skinny compared to Jin's lithe stick-figure. Whereas Jin moved as if a strong wind would bend him, but never break, Mugen moved like a mountain, bending to no wind or force on Earth. Fuu had often pitted her own self against that mountain. Fond memories.

The wind stirred the hair on the back of her neck, sending a shiver down her spine that reminded her of aches and bumps she'd ignored so that she could have this last goodbye. She wanted to have this memory to hold with the others, knowing that if she could help it, she'd never see those two again. They'd never understand. Not her secret. Not why she was doing what she'd have to do. There was no recourse for her.

* * *

Three Years. Three long hard years, with two of them spent in incarceration. Mugen was glad to see the open sky. His face, somehow even leaner than it had been in youth, was set determinedly. He had a plan. For food.

Inside the small sushi restaurant, a large fat man was slowly making seaweed rolls for the couple in front of him. With a flick of his wrist, Mugen released the small dormouse onto the table. Within seconds the couple was screaming and heading for the door, as the obese cook crabbed a knife and started trying to hack at the mouse. The mouse, cleverly, scrambled off the table and away...not so cleverly towards the kitchen. The cook followed.

Quickly, Mugen started to shove the rolls and anything else he could get his hands on into a bowl. Egg rolls mixed with seaweed mixed with wasabe all in the bowl, but Mugen didn't care. He was hungry.

Finally, Mugen had gotten everything he wanted, and just in time too. The cook stepped back through the door, with a grin on his face and a dead mouse in hand. He spotted Mugen, and apparently oblivious to the empty stand behind him, boomed out, "You hunger? I make mouse roll!"

Mugen didn't lose his appetite, but knew better than to push it. "No, I'm not into mashed Mickey."

Mugen left quickly, and heard the cook yell as he finally saw the newly scavenged counter. Within seconds, Mugen took off, the cook yelling behind him. Quickly, his long legs taking him large steps from the danger and to safety, Mugen cut through the crowds, the bowl rattling in his hand.

Mugen turned the corner and slowed down now that he was out of sight...not slow enough, as it was. He ran right into a tall thin frame, one that didn't budge at all, attesting to the strength and groundedness of the person. A man, as it was. A man who was very familiar with the degenerate thief lying before him.

"Mugen, I take it you haven't changed?"

Mugen didn't want to look up, but knew if he didn't, the damn ronin would take it as weakness, or gods forbid, sentimentality. "Listen, fish-face, I don't need to change. I'm perfect."

Jin smiled, that peculiar "kinda smiling but not really" smile that was original to only him. "Perfectly awful."

Mugen stood, wiping the remains of what was to be his lunch from his chest. "You wanna go, bitch? Cause we can go."

"Did you just call me a bitch?" Jin asked, amusement clear on his face, and his hand on his blade. Fuu's father's blade, as it was.

Mugen nodded, "I call it like I see it." His hand, too, was on his blade, another of Fuu's father; although this time it was the European style of the people who'd seduced her father into Christianity and ultimately his death.

"You'd think that after this long, the old grudge would be gone," Jin commented, still not having drawn his sword.

"You can't help it that I'm prettier."

"Positively girl-like."

"You take that back."

"No."

Standstill. Even the bystanders aren't moving, just watching the two, both attractive in their own way, samurai stare at each other. Finally, Jin blinked, slow and long.

Mugen laughed. "Ha! You lose."

Jin sighed and removed his hand from his sheath. "Isn't that how it always is?"

Mugen nodded and wrapping one long arm around Jin's shoulder, the two started away from all the public eyeing (or ogling as it was if you happened to be a woman from the age of BIRTH to DEATH). Despite three years apart, the two men, never friends, still had the same chemistry together...the chemistry of antipathy. In other words, dislike. Strong dislike. Usually covering up a begrudgingly earned respect. Okay, let's be honest...somewhere...deep inside...past the heart...through the stomach...and deeply ingrained...they liked each other. At most, as acquaintances.

"So, fishboy, what are you doing here in bumfuck Japan?"

"I was hired to escort the current Shogun on a tour of the countryside."

"Where's the shogun?"

"He was assassinated."

Silence. "So...remind me to never have you guard my body."

"You wish I would guard your body."

At this statement the group of fan-girls going by had a mass fainting episode, though one of them managed a picture before falling. The samurais walked on.

"Not particularly if that's the way you do it."

"I can do it better."

The fan-girls woke at that, but because of the mass fainting were too entangled to loose themselves and follow. Thus, the slash event of a lifetime was lost. Later, they would be hogtied and kicked out of the MuJin fanclub.

Back to the story...

"What have you been up to, Mugen?"

"Nothing much. You?"

Jin thought of his dalliances with Shiro. "Nothing much."

Another silence, this one companionable. They were quick to fall back into the pattern of walking together. Even though they'd only done it for six months, and with Fuu, it was an easy pattern to mimic. Thinking of the comfortableness of being together again, brought the thought of the last missing friend.

Jin posed the question. "Have you see Fuu?"

"Since that last time? No. You?"

"No."

"You know, Japan is a small country. I bet if we looked, we could find her."

Jin raised an eyebrow. "Why would we wish to do that?"

"I don't know, 'cause we can?"

"Why would you wish to invade her life like that?"

"Cause I can."

Jin considered that. "Agreeable. Where would we start looking?"

"Nagasaki, duh!"

"Why Nagasaki?"

"Because it's where we last saw her."

"And?"

"It's most like where she is."

"Why would you say that?"

"How far do you seriously think she'd have gotten without us?"

"A good point."

"I got twenty ryo that says she's in a brothel again."


	2. Parisian Dream

I'd like to thank all the readers who reviewed, they were greatly appreciated. Nothing better than a day of work ending and coming home to LOVE.

* * *

**Chapter Two: Parisian Dream**

_This Chinese junk we're on  
With strapping strong  
You cast free the lines  
Let's float here  
Together clearly we better  
Slip out to the brine!

* * *

_

Fuu, fortunately, was not in a brothel, or any variation of. Unlike the other two, though she didn't know it yet, she was doing well. After working in the same restaurant for a year and a half, the owner, fed up with all the duels and fighting he hadn't anticipated when he left his prime political position for the "quiet" life of cook, barkeep, and café owner, had sold the damned place to Fuu for a reasonable (read cheap) price. Fuu had then used her wits, her courage, and her ability to inflict the most pain with the least force to brutalize her clientele into acting right and actually paying for their food. Suffice to say, they either complied or didn't come back.

Given her small stature, and her circumstances, many of the customers were either a) slightly protective of the woman, b) overly lustful of her, or c) not really caring of her except that every Sunday she wouldn't serve any meat but fish on Fridays. Most of them thought it was cause that was when she went and bought it from the boats. Others had other suspicions, but they wisely kept them to themselves.

Three days before Jin and Mugen would walk into her establishment, and she was happy. She was a bit tired from all the work, but she enjoyed this sort of tired. She was doing something she'd always wanted to do. She and those she loved wouldn't ever go cold or hungry again.

Speaking of those she loved, Fuu looked up from the rice she was cooking and watched as an older gentleman named Lee entered the kitchen through a side door. He'd first been a steady customer and good tipper. That'd eventually parlayed into friendship. Lee was also one of the reasons why there were so few fights here anymore. Anyone who fought in Fuu's House paid for it in blood. The last person to fight here lost a finger, thanks to Lee. Fuu often wondered what it was about samurais that attracted her so. Even Lee, despite being over twenty years older, was attractive. And attracted. He'd made it subtly clear that he wouldn't mind taking care of her and her's. Fuu has declined, as subtle as she could. She didn't think she'd ever be able to have that kind of relationship, and to try and fail wouldn't be fair to Lee.

Fairness had become important in Fuu's life. One might say it was a governing principle. She must do what's fair. She didn't know what was coming in her life, but she was prepared.

"Fuu, there are men looking for you in the Nagasaki."

Fuu looked up from the rice. She'd left Nagasaki but hadn't gone far. She also wasn't a complete idiot, and had measures in place in case the Shogun decided she was a threat. "What kind of men?"

"Warriors. Samurai."

"Do you think they'll find me here?"

Lee thought for a minute. "I doubt it. Anyone who knows you're here, is either dead or unable to talk."

"Or unwilling to talk, right?" She asked with a smile, knowing that Lee had done many things for her.

He didn't nod, but his eyes were amused. Outside the inside door the sound of chatter and a sudden clang of breaking dishes filtered through. Fuu winced, but didn't go to check. She already knew what it was. Apparently, so did Lee. "My nephew is all thumbs, Fuu. I am thinking I should apologize for asking you to hire him."

Fuu smiled. "No need. With practice, we all get better."

_Get better at all sorts of things_, Fuu's dark side whispered to herself.

* * *

Fuu loved the small town she lived in. It was so close to Nagasaki, that it didn't really have a name, but it was far enough to be separate and more private. Very few sailors or troublemakers came to the hole in the wall. Her father, Seivo, had been a sailor. On his travels is when he'd discovered Christianity. Fuu often thought that if her father hadn't been called by the sea, he'd be alive today and her life would be very different. She couldn't completely begrudge him the sea, though. It often called to her, as well. If she didn't have the responsibilities and the ties to this land, she'd have long ago packed her things and left.

Fuu sighed, and relished the feel of the salty wind on her face. She'd just left her restaurant, in the hands of the night cook, and knew she had other things to do today before night came, but she couldn't really drag herself from the magnificent view of the sea from her cliffside home. She loved her home. With profits and much help, she'd had it built, and built sturdy. Instead of the usual weak paper walls and slightly harder paper shell, it'd been made with wood from the nearby forest. It could stand up to most storms that came this way. It looked odd when compared to the usual Japanese architecture, but to Fuu it was home.

Fuu turned, and became aware of shadows near the forest, where the path cleared it's way to her house. Immediately her hand slipped to the small dagger in her obi. When the shadows didn't move, Fuu blamed her paranoia on the news Lee had brought her yesterday. Men, looking for her? Surely the shogun would have found and tried to kill her before now. It'd been so long since that mess.

Fuu entered her dwelling, immediately stooping over to pick up the pile of shoes near the door. Kiyoko never picked up her things. Fuu didn't mind picking them up though.

After an hour of straightening up the house, and starting dinner (fried fish rice, Kiyoko's favorite), Fuu started at a knock on the front door. Wiping her hands on the small apron she'd pulled over her dress, she hurried to it, hoping that Kiyoko hadn't been causing trouble again.

When she opened the door, she froze. Memories assaulted her from all sides, and with them long forgotten (repressed) emotions surfaced. Fuu let out a scream of joy (though to the two men it was more like just a scream/screech), and threw herself into the arms of the two samurai on her porch. They, like usual, just stood there and let her hug them.

"I haven't seen y'all in ages!"

"Hello, Fuu."

"What's up."

"Oh! What are you doing here? Oh my, I guess it was you two in Nagasaki asking around? Thank god, Lee was gonna go and try to kill you for asking, but if I'd known, and I'm glad I stopped him, oh, wait until he sees you two, I've told him all about you!"

Jin took the brief pause Fuu took to breathe to interrupt. "We decided to come find you, and see how you've been doing."

"Not that we care," Mugen interjected glibly.

Fuu smiled fondly at the two. "Are you hungry? I've got plenty cooking."

The two men immediately pushed past her and followed their noses to the kitchen. Fuu was happy to see them. As the years passed she'd thought of them less often, but that didn't mean she didn't think of them.

Just as Fuu entered the kitchen to find the two men standing over the skillet waiting for it to be done, a little rocket of energy and light ran through the kitchen door and threw itself at Fuu. The men, trained samurai, immediately had hands on the hilts of their swords, but when Fuu laughed and recognized the sudden intrusion, they eased.

The rocket/energy/intrusion turned out to be a small girl. Neither Jin nor Mugen was good with ages, especially not with children, but she looked young. She also looked exactly like Fuu, down to the small rodent like creature on her shoulder. Said rodent took a flying leap and landed on Mugen's head, correctly revealing itself to be Momo (Mugen figured the thing should've died the first time it dared to land on him, but if the damn thing lasted this long who was he to kill it?) (Oh, yeah...hungry). Mugen slapped at Momo, but Momo merely grinned and scrambled around in his hair.

Fuu lifted the small girl onto her hips, and it immediately became clear that the girl would far outsize Fuu in height when she got older. She was already almost half Fuu's height. The question in both men's mind, being curious as they were, was who the girl was.

Fuu listened to Kiyoko chatter on about where Uncle Lee had taken her today (fishing, shopping, lunch, more fishing, then gasp shopping, again). Lee sure spoiled her baby, but Fuu was just glad that there was a man around who would. Fuu nodded her head and laughed when it was expected as Kiyoko chattered on for about ten minutes. To Jin and Mugen it sounded no different than Momo talking. It obviously was trying to say something, but they didn't know what.

Finally, Kiyoko turned her big brown eyes to the two strangers and with one pudgy hand pointed. "Who they?"

Fuu stiffened, having forgotten completely about them. She set Kiyoko down, and smiled at Jin and Mugen. "Kiki, baby, I'd like you to meet...Uncle Jin and Uncle Mugen. Jin, Mugen, this is my daughter Kiyoko."

Silence. Crickets. Boat passing in the water.

Mugen laughed. Inside he was seething. Jin didn't laugh but inside felt the same. They turned to each other in mutual dislike and thought the exact same thought for the first time in their lives. _That sonofabitch got her pregnant.

* * *

_

Okay, I figure I'll clue y'all into the babe's name...

After searching for a long time...I chose Kiyoko...it was tempting to choose Akiko, which means "love child", but that's not really true, so I went with Kiyoko which means "clean child" in Japanese. You'll get it later.


	3. Magnetized

Thanks for all the reviews. Much appreciated!

LOL! Yesh! Cliffhangers are fun. I guess I'll answer this one quickly for you.

* * *

**Chapter Three: Magnetized**

_Slain, by your zirconium smile  
I was slain by your olivine eyes  
Slain, I was lying in piles  
Hoping shovels would cast me  
Furnaces burn everlasting  
Black tattoos of you onto me  
Furnaces burn everlasting  
Black tattoos

* * *

_

Jin and Mugen gaped at Fuu. Fuu, no longer a child, but now has a child? Their little minds were trying to wrap themselves around that concept, and in the meantime, Lee stepped through the back door. The tall man studied the two men in the corner (looking lost, oh so lost) and decided if Fuu was smiling at them, then everything was fine.

Kiyoko launched herself at her uncle Lee and he bent over to pick the small child up. She looked positively miniscule in his large scarred hands, but she'd never known the violence those hands had dealt out, and Lee would spend his life making sure she'd never know any kind of violence. "Fuu?"

Fuu turned from where she was silently laughing (and spinning lies in her head), and turned to Lee. "Oh. Um, if you want you can take her down to the washroom and get her ready for her bath. I'm sure she smells like..." Fuu pretended to sniff the air. "...fish!" A pretend look of disgust. "Ewwww!"

Kiyoko giggled and burrowed deeper into Lee's chest. With a brief throw in the air, Lee laid her over his shoulder, causing more giggles, and walked down the hall. Fuu smiled at the familiar sight. Then, with a wave of her hand, she moved Jin and Mugen out of her way and started to stir up the almost burnt fried rice.

Jin spoke first. "So...you're a mother?"

"Went through the whole eight months."

"I thought pregnant chicks went nine months?" Mugen asked, having thrown himself into a kitchen chair.

"She came early."

"How old is Kiyoko?"

Hesitation. "Almost two."

Jin did the math in his head, and concluded that Fuu had gotten pregnant after they'd separated, so he wouldn't have to kill Mugen after all. He turned to communicate this to Mugen, who doubtless was feeling fear at the thought of Jin's sword prowess. Mugen didn't know how to do math.

"When did you get pregnant, by who, and where is he?" Mugen asked, not one for subtlety.

Fuu laughed to cover her hesitation, and quickly thought. "I got pregnant by a sailor about five months after we split up. You don't need to hunt him down, he's long dead."

"You've been alone all this time?" Jin asked, surreptitiously smacking the shit out of Mugen.

"I had help."

"The large man?"

"His name is Lee."

"Are you sure he didn't get you pregnant?"

This time Fuu smacked the shit of Mugen. He was starting to remember why he'd always had a headache around these two. "Lee is a good friend. He and I aren't that way."

"I bet he wants to be that way."

"Fuck you, Mugen. Not all guys think like that."

Mugen made a disbelieving noise.

"Momma said bad word," Kiyoko explained as she walked in all fresh and clean in her pink towel. Fuu had spent a week's pay on that towel, but it'd been worth it. Her baby loved the color pink.

Fuu went to pick her up, not wanting her feet to get dirty on the floor just after her bath, but Kiyoko already knew who she wanted to hold her. Toddling along, with a big grin on her face, and her brown eyes sparkling, Kiyoko put her hands up to the stiff standing form of Jin and asked, "Up?"

Jin didn't know what to do. He'd never held a child before. What if he squeezed too hard and bruised her? What if he dropped her? What if she cut herself on his sword? In the end, the decision was taken from him, as Kiyoko started to climb up him and he had to bend over and pick her up.

Kiyoko put her slightly chubby arms around his skinny little neck and stared at him. It was slightly unnerving. "Who you?"

"My name is Jin."

"Gene?"

"Jin."

"Jean?"

"Close enough."

"You long hair."

"Yes."

"Like mommy?"

Jin took in the long brown hair that Fuu now wore loose. It went all the way to the bottom of her back. "Not as long."

"You girl like mommy?"

Mugen laughed long and hard at that, earning a glare from Jin. Mugen stood and reached over to take the small girl from Jin. "Yes, he's a girl like your mommy."

Mugen slipped Kiyoko onto his hip with the ease of a man who'd done it before. Fuu asked what she and Jin were both thinking. "You've held children before?"

"I did have four younger siblings before I left. I usually got stuck with the shitty diapers and crying brats."

Kiyoko widened her eyes theatrically. "You say bad word?"

Mugen smiled evilly and nodded. Kiyoko smacked him in the mouth. "No bad word."

Mugen was shocked, but mildly amused. Jin actually laughed out loud. Fuu smiled and started to doll out the food, which were a bit smaller portions than usual, since Jin and Mugen were here. She then put the four plates on the table and called out that dinner was ready.

She took Kiyoko from Mugen and put her in the special-made chair that Lee had bought her for feeding her daughter, and sat to share her food with her. Jin and Mugen took two other seats and dived into their food like they hadn't eaten in days, which they might not have if they were traveling. It was something they were used to, though.

Lee stepped into the kitchen whilst toweling dry the small fuzz he had on in head. He'd once had the typical top knot of a samurai, but had removed it several years ago. Fuu had never been able to get the story out of him. Not that she hadn't tried. She had. Very hard. Damn you, curiosity. Damn you mysterious attraction to all things samurai.

Lee started to take his seat, on the right of Fuu, when Kiyoko let up a scream. Lee immediately was at her side, cooing at her. "What's wrong, Kiki?"

"I left Birdie at creek! I not mean to!" Fuu knew immediately what she meant. For Kiyoko's second birthday Fuu had given her a small toy swan. It was plush and soft, but inside the hard beak was a music box. When you opened the beak, a soft melody drifted out. Kiki took it everywhere.

Lee smiled at the girl. "I'll get it."

Fuu objected. "Dinner just started. At least wait until after dinner."

Lee shook his head. "It's fine. I'll get it now before it gets too dark." With a brief kiss on Kiyoko's forehead, he left the kitchen for the small enclave where he and Kiki fished some days. Fuu sighed, and went to put his plate into the oven.

"Are you and he involved or something?" Mugen asked around a mouthful of food.

"No. He's just a good friend. He takes care of Kiyoko when I'm working. When his wife kicks him out, he comes and stays in the spare room."

Mugen and Jin both took some satisfaction from the fact that Lee wasn't a threat to them and Fuu...not that there was a them and Fuu. No sirree. Nothing of the sort.

"If you two don't have anywhere else to say, you can have the spare room, if you'd like." Fuu explained as she finished feeding Kiyoko. Jin and Mugen both took note that she didn't eat a lot of what she had on her plate, but rather fed Kiyoko. The love in her eyes was clear for the girl. Fuu was a mother. How the hell had that happened? Where was the young girl with a sharp tongue but a light in her eyes? When had she been replaced by this woman with an entire life that didn't include them?

* * *

I'll give y'all a clue as to what's going on next chapter...there's a little fact in here...a little discrepancy...that Jin won't know the details of, but will know what lied about. 


	4. Secret Someones

Woohoo! New chapter. A bit short, but I'll make it up with the next one.

* * *

**Chapter Four: Secret Someones**

_Where all the rolling rollers roll  
And all the secret someones go  
And all the roving rovers ramble  
Down my back, down my track…_

* * *

"She lied." 

Mugen groggily looked up at Jin, who stood over him, hands on his hips, glowering. "Wha? Damnit, nag, I'm sleepin'."

"Fuu lied to us."

Mugen forced himself to wake up. "About what?"

"I don't know."

Mugen looked at Jin skeptically. "Then what are you talking about?"

"She hesitated."

Mugen stared.

"When I asked her about Kiyoko. She hesitated. Fuu only hesitates before speaking when she's lying. Otherwise, she's instantly filling the air with words."

Mugen thought on it, but before he could form a reply, a noise from outside the door had him and Jin at their feet, but silent.

"Lee?" Fuu called from the other end of the hall. A murmur acknowledged that call, and small footsteps started past the guest room.

At first, neither Jin nor Mugen could hear anything, but with distinct concentrating, they began to make out the low argument going on in the resting lounge.

"...don't know why they've come. I thought I'd left that life behind."

"If they are here, Fuu, then there is a chance the shogun sent them."

"Mugen and Jin wouldn't do that."

"You don't know them anymore. They could do anything. The dark one, Muger-"

"Mugen."

"-has prison tattoos. He's been jailed. Probably for a heinous crime."

"He's had those forever...though he has more now, but that doesn't matter. They won't hurt me."

"And Kiyoko? What will they do if they find out her origin?"

"I won't tell them. You won't. No one else knows."

"Fuu, it is a sad story, but it is not shameful. You yourself feared them ever finding out, you told me so when you first arrived here. I do not trust those men. I do not trust them alone with you here. I told my wife I'm staying here. I'm not leaving, until they do."

"Lee! That's not necc-"

"Mommy? I thirsty."

Mugen and Jin could hear the unspoken tensions floating out of the room, but stayed silent. Neither was quite sure what was going on, but something was. Neither of them liked being in the dark, so it was pretty clear what the dawn was going to bring. They were going to find out what Fuu was hiding, like it or not. Jin was thinking of asking around the village, maybe finding out when and why Fuu came here. Mugen was thinking of ransacking the place looking for her diary.

"I'm sorry, baby, I forgot your bottle. Come with Mommy to go heat up some milk?" Small footsteps, made slightly heavier with the new weight in her arms, walked past. Low murmuring of consolation drifted through the darkened doorway.

Jin and Mugen were about to move to their cots, when a new shadow merged at the door. They paused and listened, as they were intended to.

"I do not trust you too, as you've heard. You hurt her or that little girl, I shall kill you both. If not me, then the village will. We all love Fuu. We protect her. You're the first to ever venture here and find her. We will make you the last."

Lee walked back to the lounge, and they could hear him groan as he lowered himself to the small couch there. Jin and Mugen stared at each other.

"What the hell is she caught up in?"

"And does she need saving from it?" Jin ventured back in whisper, just as Mugen had whispered his little dynamic question. Old habits died hard, the two were learning. They were both falling back into the pattern of old times. Protect Fuu, get food, sleep. It was a mandate they'd both lived with for almost half a year, three years ago, yet it was coming back to them like it had been yesterday.

Mugen fell back asleep almost instantly, but Jin was awake and thinking. So many things change, and so many stay the same. Fuu, still the wide-eyed girl they'd left standing at a cross-road so long ago, yet now forever different. Older, wiser, just a touch taller. Still wearing that pink kimono and her hair up.

Mugen, still rough and tumble fighter, still angry, though at the world or himself, Jin had never known. Slightly more scarred, definitely skinnier, and his hair just as poofy as ever.

So much the same, so much different. Even himself was not separate. Jin removed his glasses, and studied the brief scratches on the surface. It seemed as if the lenses were reflecting old memories back at him.

First meeting Fuu, after he and Mugen had caused her place of business to burn down. The anger in her face causing it to almost turn purple, and just when it seemed her head would explode, she'd smiled and it'd eased away. Right before she'd tricked them into coming on that foolhardy journey with her.

Meeting Shiro in the rain, her sharing her umbrella and teaching him how to cook fish. Finding out her destiny, and spending the next three years trying to free a woman who didn't want to be free.

Picking up Kiyoko, a child so small, with the darkest eyes he'd ever seen. Eyes that were familiar to him. Eyes he'd...no. The memory was gone. There was someone lingering in the child's face. Someone not Fuu. Someone he knew. He would find out who did this. He would avenge Fuu's honor. It was one of the few things he'd ever been good at. Killing.

Well. Killing, and making sweet love to whores.


	5. Shadow Blues

Yeah, this update took a while. I give you no excuses, only the reasons. One, yesterday was the big 1-9 birthday for me, so I said SCREW working. Two, I just started a third story, since I always MUST have three active stories, and that took a few days to get off the ground. You'll be happy to know, it's just as popular as this one. LOL...and now...onto the chapter...

Oh, and, to make it clear, no, Kiyoko's name is not spelled wrong. I researched modern and traditional Japanese names, and that's the one I wanted. It's correct. Thank you. Back to your scheduled program.

* * *

**Chapter Five: Shadow Blues**

_There's a shadow beneath the sea  
There's a shadow between you and me  
I've learned that love is scared of light  
Thousand seeds from a flower  
Blowing through the night_

* * *

The next morning was dreary and slightly chilled, a cold front moving in off the ocean bringing sporadic rains and thunderstorms with it. Usually Fuu enjoyed the rainy season, but this year was a bit tenser for her. She'd like to blame it on the knowledge that she was well and truly settled here, and didn't wish for anything to jeopardize that, but it was really the presence of her old friends that had her on edge. Fuu had fully intended to leave her past where it lay, but even sleeping dogs wake up sometimes. 

Speaking of sleeping dogs, the two of them and Lee were sitting at her kitchen table at the moment, waiting for breakfast. Fuu didn't know who instituted the tradition that women were the cookers, cleaners, and general bullshit takers of society, but he deserved a kick in the ass.

She swiped a small hand across her sweating forehead and glared at Lee. "Why don't you go get Kiki up?" Lee recognized the impatient look on her face, and nodded silently, before casting pitying looks at Jin and Mugen, who were too groggy to realize the bad temperament Fuu was in. Not that it was her fault she was in a snit. That fault lay with the unexpected arrivals, and the worry that had kept her up half the night. Stupid samurais. Can't even call before they show up at a person's house.

Mugen laid his head down on the table and slowly banged it. All the clanging and noises Fuu was making from the other side of the kitchen drowned out the small oomph's he made as he did so. After several minutes of that, Jin's hand shot between Mugen's head and the table. "Why are you doing that?"

"Domesticity."

"I'm amazed that you know a word with more than two syllables."

"I hate domestic scenes."

"I didn't need a definition, Mugen."

"Just making sure."

"I have a plan for today."

Mugen looked up. "What about today?"

"To find out why and what Fuu is lying about."

"Why do we need to know?"

Jin stared blankly for a few minutes before answering. "We don't."

"So why are we trying to find out?"

"I want to know. Whatever it is, if she's lying about it, it can't be good."

"How do you come to that conclusion?"

"Two big words in one day? Have you been learning your ABCs or something?"

Mugen glared.

"The last time she kept something from us, we both almost died, and herself as well."

"Yeah, that's a good reason to try and find out. So what's the plan, fishface?"

"I shall ask around town, see what she's been doing for the past three years. You shall keep her occupied."

Mugen grinned lasciviously. "Just how occupied you want her?"

Jin smacked Mugen on the back of the head, but kept silent when Fuu turned around at the sound. She smiled at them both, and turned back to the breakfast she was cooking. "Do not touch her, Mugen. This is our...friend. A mother. For all we know, Kiyoko is your daughter."

Mugen looked confused. "Why would she be my daughter? I never touched Fuu."

Jin adapted a similar confused look. "What do you mean? You obviously had feelings for her."

He blushed. "I did not. I was a little hot for her bones, but that ain't shit."

Jin stared at Mugen. "You're saying that you didn't...?"

"Nope. Not that I wouldn't have minded it at the end of those long days of walking, but with you around, who'd take the chance? Hell, who had the chance?"

"Are you implying..."

"Breakfast is ready," Fuu said as she set a plate of small, thin bread slices on the table. Next to it was some freshly heated jam. She started to say something else, but a squeal from the doorway drew her gaze, and their's as well.

Kiyoko stood there, smiling toothily. She was rumpled and flushed from bed, and she walked slowly, dragging a decrepit stuffed toy behind her. Contrary to last night, the small girl moved slowly, almost reluctantly. She started for her mother, but at the last minute caught sight of Jin and went to his side. She held her hands up, toy and all, and waited for him to pick her up. Kiki wasn't often told no, and this wasn't one of those times. Still cautiously, but slightly more used to it, Jin picked her up and settled her on his lap. Since she seemed comfortable there, he reached for a piece of bread and slathered jam on it. Just as he was going to take a bite of it, Kiki took it from his hand and shoved it all into her mouth.

Fuu suppressed her laughter and called to Lee, who stood in the doorway. "Are you coming in to town with me today?"

"No. I'm going to hunt up near the mountains. I won't be able to take Kiki with me."

"That's fine. I'll have Morena watch her," Fuu replied, taking a seat beside Mugen and watching with increasing amusement as Kiki proceeded to take and eat any breakfast Jin tried to keep for himself.

Lee sighed and took the seat across from her. "I suppose I could put off the hunt for a few..."

"No. You must hunt. Morena will be fine," Fuu interrupted, before turning a cold eye to him. "You don't have a problem with Morena watching her, do you?"

"I just don't think that's an appropriate environment."

"I happen to know that during the day whorehouses are usually the quietest places in town, and safe."

Mugen immediately chippered up. "A whorehouse? In this bodink town? Where?"

Fuu smiled indulgently and smacked him in the head and stole his piece of bread. "Nowhere. I'm not telling you. Those are my friends, and I won't have you forcing your carnal desires on them."

"Ain't no force involved. They love it."

"Nonetheless...no."

Mugen sighed and immediately put his head back down, reaching blindly to his plate for a piece of bread that was no longer there.

Kiki giggled and stole another piece of bread from Jin. He stifled a smile and somberly thought aloud, "She eats like Fuu."

Fuu grinned. "And how is that?"

"Too much, too fast. Like a human garbage disposal."

Mugen added his own two-ryo. "Yeah...I'm surprised you're not fat by now, you swine."

Fuu smacked him again. "Shut up. I do not."

Mugen and Jin stared at her with incredulous looks. "You do too."

Fuu shrugged and blushed before turning back to Lee. "Remember when I was pregnant and had the most awful cravings for cherries?"

Lee sighed. "I do. I was in Nagasaki buying bushels of cherries every other week. The sailors thought I was a pimp."

Mugen stared at him. "Why a pimp?"

"The whores in Nagasaki have a trick involving cherries, a small braided thread, and their-"

"Hey! Child present!" Fuu interrupted. Lee blushed and quieted down. Fuu smiled evilly. "And just what do you know of whores, Mr. Married Man?"

Lee, if possible, blushed deeper. "Not a thing. Not one damn thing."

"Language!" Kiki said, shaking her finger at her Uncle Lee. "You get no treats!"

Fuu smiled and stood, gathering the empty plates from the table. Lee made his excuses, and though Kiki cried and whined, from Jin's lap, left the house for his hunting. Fuu quickly wiped down the kitchen and left to dress Kiyoko for town.

In the kitchen, Jin stood and started for the door. Mugen watched him almost leave, but then called out, "Where you goin'?"

Jin sighed and explained, again. "I'm going in town to ask questions. You're going to stay with Fuu and make sure she doesn't find out I'm snooping."

"Oh, yeah."

Jin started to leave, but turned back again. "Maybe you can try and get some answers out of her, as well?"

Mugen shrugged, and laughed. "You said snooping, you fucking mother hen. I guess we all know why you got such long pretty hair, you girl."

Jin let a small smile slip. "Jealous, Mugen?"

"Of your scrawny ass, never."

Mugen knew it wasn't entirely true. For most of the journey they'd been on together, he'd been jealous of Jin. Jin, who Fuu had liked and wanted, who the women had considered honorable and courageous. Jin could try and throw Mugen off the trail, but Mugen knew the truth. Jin wasn't honorable. Jin wasn't courageous. He was a coward who took advantage of Fuu, then left her when she needed him. Mugen would make sure that he paid for that.

* * *

I lied. No action in this chapter. Lots of humor in next chapter though. 


	6. Ether Sings

This chapter was actually written last week, but the document manager on my account hasn't been working right. What does this mean to you, my faithful readers? It means that the really funny running joke I had going on in this story had to be cut, ergo, not so funny a chapter. It saddens me. It was hilarious. See, it involved Jin and his search for answers in the village. And it was funny. And because document manager didn't want to run scripts right and give me my damn lines, you don't get to see it.

So, I hope that explained why I took so long to get this up. I was waiting to see if they'd fix it soon, and they haven't, so I finally redid it and uploaded.

**Chapter Six: Ether Sings**

_A tiny little flute is whistling in the lips  
Of a stranger on the corner  
A tiny little girl ties flowers to her wrists  
And the bees come round to adorn her_

All the time spent dreaming is never lost  
Dreams come back through the bells of trumpeting horns  
Souls lost into the ether of death  
Come back wise in the eyes and the arms of newborns

"Are you going to answer my question?"

Fuu ignored Mugen and his insistent gaze, preferring to concentrate on making dumplings for the crowd that even now echoed their noises through the kitchen door.

"Damn it, Fuu, I'm serious. Answer me."

"I am wearing underclothes, you fucking pervert!" Fuu yelled back at him, wiping a touch of sweat from her brow. It amazed her that in three years this man hadn't learned a single form of subtlety, and that his form of flirting involved asking intimate questions.

Mugen grinned. "Damn."

Fuu bared her teeth at him before gesturing to a large barrel of fish. "Since you can't seem to shut up, I'll give you something to do. Open the barrel, take out a fish, cut off it's head, repeat. Do that until there's no fish in there."

Mugen shrugged and walked over to the worktable beside the back door and got to work. Even working, he still found time to be nosy. "Who's her father?"

Fuu hesitated, before continuing the boiling of dumplings. "You don't know him."

"Doesn't matter."

She sighed. "Maybe this is a private matter, Mugen."

"We're friends, you can tell me."

"Maybe that was me politely telling you to mind your own business."

"Your business is my business. You're like a...three-time removed cousin of mine that I have slightly amorous feelings for."

Fuu took a second to sort that out, and then laughed. "This your way of telling me I'm cute?"

"You always knew you were cute. It's prolly what got you pregnant."

Fuu lost that carefree smile and turned back to her work. "No, it wasn't that."

"So who was he?"

"Why are you so damn insistent on knowing?"

"Why don't you want me to know?"

"Why don't I smack you and hope it addles you enough that you shut up?"

"Who's her father?"

"Why?"

"I just want my suspicions confirmed so that I can kill him without guilt."

Fuu laughed. "You? Guilt? Over killing? I doubt it."

Mugen glared over his shoulder at her, not paying attention and almost taking his finger off in the process. He swore and turned back to the fish. "I have guilt."

"Over many things, I'm sure. Death and destruction causing you guilt is something I doubt." The dumplings were done, so she put them on a plate and handed them off to one of the servers that came bustling through the door. She turned back to Mugen, watching as he deftly handled the butcher knife, taking off heads with ease. She wasn't surprised by his deftness. He'd used his sword for too long not to move with some grace, though the amount of which he had still amazed her. Watching him fight was like watching the wind blow. He moved so smoothly from one place to the next, it was a form of dancing. She'd spent months watching Jin and Mugen dance, together and apart, against each other, against others. She'd never known her place in that dance. Only when they returned to her, had she realized. They danced, but she was the music. She was why they'd done what they'd done. Even now, they sought to continue to dance to her beat, to move for her, to kill for her. It had taken her three long years to realize, that she never wanted to be someone's music again. She didn't want to be the reason why so many men died, just doing their jobs. Some of them, yeah, they'd been bad men, but some of them hadn't. Some had just been doing their job, trying to live, trying to survive in a time of great turmoil.

Mugen swore as he nicked his finger again, this time deeper, spurting blood on the table and his clothes. He stood there and watched as that blood dripped down, feeling the pain of it for the first time in a long time. So long he'd been cold to it, surviving without really living. Now he could feel again. He didn't know whether it was this place, or her, or even him, that made it that way, but he knew he didn't want to be cold again.

Fuu wrapped a small napkin around his finger, applying pressure so that it would stop bleeding. She smiled. "And here I was just thinking how smooth you are."

"I'm smooth."

"As a baby's bottom."

"You'd know," he snorted, blowing one of those oh-so-long strands of hair out of her face. Her big eyes stared up at him from that curtain of hair that'd slipped from her hair knot. He asked again, but now for different reasons. "Who?"

Her eyes lowered, she didn't want to look at him as she avoided the question. "Why?"

He used his uninjured hand to lift her chin and her gaze. "Because I want to know."

She smiled bitterly. "You already know, you just don't want to."

"Jin?"

She laughed, surprised. "No."

He glared at her in confusion. "Then who?"

She smiled, this time almost maternally. "Think on it. You'll figure it out."

There was a rap at the door, and the couple stepped apart as Jin opened the door. "Mugen, I need to speak with you."

Mugen nodded and spared one last unreadable glare at Fuu before walking out the door with Jin. Fuu watched them go, the two most important men in her life and sighed. They both knew the truth, somewhere in their minds, but the little innocence they still possessed wouldn't allow them to even think on it. It was amazing how life could twist in unexpected ways, but Fuu had long learned to look for the silver lining.

The sound of breaking dishes and long, loud swearing had her cursing and heading out the kitchen doors. Mugen and Jin stood outside, waiting for her to go before moving away to speak.

"I learned nothing," Jin said promptly and agitatedly. He was not in a good mood, having doors slammed in his face, sake thrown at him, and in one rare instance, a dead rat put on his head, and none in the course of getting information.

"I learned something," Mugen replied happily, before roping his arm around Jin's neck and pulling him close conspiratorially. "You're not the father."

Jin pulled back and raised an eyebrow. "I knew that."

"I didn't. I thought I was gonna have to hurt you."

"Why would I be the father of Kiyoko?"

Mugen dodged the heavy blow Jin sent his way, sidestepping it quite easily; in jest it had been sent. "Well...you and Fuu had this connection going on back then."

"We were...friends."

"She liked you more than friends."

Jin couldn't deny that, but he could send his own unassailable truths to fight with. "As you liked her?"

Mugen grinned. "As I like her."

Jin froze. "You still...for Fuu?"

"Always did," Mugen replied, before throwing his hands out to the crowded street before them. "I like her," he pointed, "and her," and again, "and her. Not to mention her, her, and her," Mugen explained before letting his arms fall to his sides.

Jin barely repressed the growl forming in the back of his throat. "Lust and love are two different things, Mugen."

Mugen smiled grimly. "Not for me."

Jin bowed his head. "And so shall be your loneliness, if you cannot learn that they are different."

Mugen grinned, evil on his mind as he turned back to the blue-clad warrior, Jin. "Hey, Jin...I wub you!"

Jin, having just assimilated the information of Mugen's theories of love and lust, barely suppressed a grimace. "Stop being a child, this is important."

"Take the stick out of your ass, and maybe I will."

"This is about Fuu. Her honor is gone. We must find the man who took it, and regain it for her."

Mugen scratched his scruffy chin, and spoke quietly to himself, though loud enough that Jin heard him. "She said that I already know who it is, I just don't want to know."

"You already know?"

"I thought it was you, but she said it wasn't."

Jin nodded, closing his eyes as he thought. "Then we shall just have to go over the list, and see if we can figure it out."

"The list?"

"Of the men we met on your journey together. It should not be too hard. Only a few of them dared to venture close enough to Fuu to show their interest."

Mugen laughed hardily, drawing more than a few ogles from passing matrons and a few blushes from the maidens accompanying them. "They were scared."

Jin nodded. "We were her protectors."

"You were her protector. I was there for the free food. What little there was."

Jin let that lie slip and sank down onto a bench outside Fuu's small establishment. Mugen sat beside him, slouching down until he was comfortable. "So where do we start?"

Jin shrugged. "Where else? The tea house where you met her, and eventually, me as well."


	7. Lost at Seaflower Cove

Woot woot! New chapter! Yay. And, big thanks to wikipedia for helping me with the names. It was like...so HELPFUL...

A/N: I don't know if y'all are noticing...but there are very subtle hints in the lyrics I give you as to the ending of this pretty little tale of mine...and yes, I do have a specific couple in mind for the end...I bet some of y'all know who it is, too...

**Chapter Seven: Lost at Seaflower Cove**

_Pretty words doled up on silver platters  
Chanting sea shanties the words that matter  
Oh how they shatter me_

Tattooed sailor man pull that net from the sea  
Is there something good inside there for me  
Something for me  
No more rusty strings not these deadened things

Now, understand, that usually, in any other problem and situation, once set upon their path, Mugen and Jin would not be stirred from it. Also understand...they have a bad habit of killing people. Many, many people, predominantly male, therefore, really limiting the "daddy" pool. Nonetheless, they gave it a shot.

Two hours after that fateful idea to "go through the list", yeah, the DAMN LIST...

"This is sucks."

They sat on the steps of Fuu's home, empty of its inhabitants at this time of the day. Jin, looking as poised as ever, sat ramrod straight, the tail of his hair flickering a bit in the small sea breeze. Mugen, as usual, was all over. His legs stretched in front of him, leaning on his elbows, but seeming to take up all the available room around. It was he who pronounced the endeavor of forming a list as "sucking", though Jin hardily agreed in his own monotone intone.

"I did not realize it would be so difficult."

"Man, who has the fucking time to remember all those names?"

"I never truly bothered to stay and learn the name of my victims, or those I rescued."

"I stuck around to get the pussy the damsels in distress used to share with me, but who really needs to know a name when "baby" will suffice?"

"You are once again, surprisingly crude and belligerent, Mugen."

"Oh, like you didn't 'curry the favors' of any of the women you saved? Pssht!" Mugen scratched behind his ear, sending a glare at Jin, who didn't bother to reply. "Women nowadays don't know how to properly thank a man. All you get now after risking your life for some bitch is a kiss on the cheek. What the hell? I can't even get a little second base action?"

Jin ignored Mugen. "In the town where we met Fuu. There was a magistrate and his son..."

"Shibui."

"Yes...but they're both dead."

Mugen scratched his chin idly with a twig. "Oniwakamaru."

"The ogre?"

"Yeah...oh, shit...he's dead too."

"Inuyaka."

"The guy who tried to kill you when we were in the forest, where, I might add, I saved Fuu's ass _again_. She's one of those bitches who don't put out."

Jin idly slapped Mugen in the back of the head, and continued his ruminations. "Inuyaka is still alive. He told me that we would cross paths again, though we haven't. Perhaps he met with Fuu first."

Mugen nodded and grinned cheekily. "If I could write, he'd be on the fucking list."

"Detective Manzou."

"The narrator?"

"The cop."

"Oh yeah...wasn't he following us or something?"

"Or something. Last I saw of him, he was beneath a very large pale man."

"Let's hope he didn't survive."

"Let's hope."

Mugen laughed. "Still, let's add him to the list...hey...do you think Fuu has a thing for fat men?"

Jin cocked an eyebrow and turned to Mugen. "Why?"

"Cause so far everyone on the List is fat."

Jin nodded. "There is Hishikawa."

Mugen froze. "The one who drew Fuu all nekkid-like?"

"Yes. He left, but perhaps he has returned to Japan."

"Well, if you're gonna include the fairy, I have to include the Swede."

Jin shook his head. "I believe you're speaking of Jouji, who was in fact, Dutch."

"Yeah...he's alive."

"He's also as much of a, as you put it, 'fairy' as the artist."

"Damn."

"You need new gay-dar, Mugen."

"Hey...I can't help it if I don't pay attention to dudes and their interest in me. I'm sexy to all people."

"More like to no people."

"You wanna fight, Jin-bitch?"

"Anytime, moron."

Neither moved. Finally, with a shrug, they refocused on their List. In the distance, the sun began to set, causing long shadows to form around them. Soon, Fuu would return, and start dinner, a prospect both found equally appealing.

Quietly, with a respect for the dead, Jin spoke. "Shinsuke."

Mugen nodded. "If he weren't already dead, we'd be hunting him down."

"She cared very deeply for him."

Mugen snorted. "Only a chick could fall in love in a day."

"She cried for days after, in her sleep. She didn't want us to know."

"Eh...she got over it."

Jin nodded. "She never spoke of it."

Mugen decided to hurry past Fuu's first love, a young thief who met his tragic end at the hands of the police, and quickly named another man who'd Mugen, Jin, and Fuu had all encountered...and who Mugen and Jin hadn't killed...it was a surprisingly short list.

"Saganshougen."

Jin lets out a small snort, before shaking his head. "He's alive, but I doubt Fuu would ever...consummate with him."

"Hey...an idea just came to me...what if the kid ain't even her's?"

The stewed on that for a minute. "Kiyoko looks too much like Fuu to not be her daughter. She is an exact replica."

"Except for the eyes."

Silence.

"What about Yamane?"

"Another narrator."

"We encountered him briefly."

"Too briefly. He was also ugly."

"He goes on the List," Jin said decisively. Mugen shrugged and with a finger, made a small check mark in the air.

"Yessir."

"Zuikoi."

"Dude, Jin, he's a monk."

"And?"

"And don't they take a vow of...not fucking?"

Jin sighed. "I suppose. They do not always follow their vows."

Mugen shrugged. "Okay...on the List."

Jin stood and started to pace before Mugen, who watched beneath half-lowered eyelids. Jin's mind was starting to work faster as years of meditation had honed his body to do. Soon, he was shouting out names that occurred to him, some not even still alive.

"Otawa?"

"The fucking spy?"

"Yes."

"He's alive."

"On the List."

Mugen shrugged.

"Okuru?"

"The dude Fuu was with when we got separated? I kicked his ass."

"Is he dead?"

"I don't know."

"He goes on the List."

"Fine..."

"Niwa?"

"The twins?"

"Yes."

"Fuu doesn't seem the ménage a trois type to me."

"Be serious."

"I am...if she was...then, well, this whole journey of our's could have been delightfully different..."

"Mugen!"

"What!"

"Let's move on..."

"And I was having such a good daydream..."

"Heike?"

"The zombie? I don't think zombies can have kids...and I don't think Fuu would like the smell. She yells when I go a week without a shower...can you picture her with a dead guy?"

"I'd rather not."

"What about the baseball guy...ummm...what the hell is his name..."

"Kagemaru?"

"Yeah! Him."

"I believe he is dead."

"From a fucking splinter?"

"It was many splinters."

"If you say so, fishface."

"I do not believe we left anyone else alive."

"So...our list includes...Inuyaka, Detective Manzou, Hishikawa, Jouji, Yamane, Zuikoi, Otawa, Okuru, the Niwa boys, and Heike."

They both nodded and thought on that. "I think our list sucks."

"Indeed."


	8. The Ballad of John Vogelin

Gawd, I update this story slowly. Someone needs to smack me or something...YA HEAR? Smack me, readers. Hard.

* * *

**Chapter Eight: The Ballad of John Vogelin

* * *

**

_I survived the desperate toll dark depression takes_

_I may not break even but babe I'll never break_

_Golden coins and smiles, no, they cannot tip my scales_

_Cuz this land, this love will never be for sale

* * *

_

Dinner that night was uneventful, if you ignored Lee's late arrival; Kiki's throwing of food into Jin's hair, and Mugen almost psychotic ability to make her mind (without violence, no less). Fuu took it all with a grain of salt. Samurais were wanderers by spirit, and rarely stayed in one place long. Mugen and Jin would leave soon, and the foolish mission to find Kiki's father would end, and for once, without the tears and blood she always envisioned.

For all his faults, Fuu didn't hate Kiki's father. At one time, he might even have been a good man, tortured by inner demons that demanded his honor. He'd been horrible and violent with her, and yes, her nightmares were often of him, but these were facts that Fuu would never reveal to her daughter. Kiyoko would never know the pain and suffering of her mother. Fuu had cried her tears long ago, and wouldn't cry them again.

Near the end of the meal, Fuu took her leave, using the little time she got at night to spend with her daughter alone to give Kiki her bath and put her to bed. She enjoyed the experience of washing her daughter, and could remember her own mother doing the same for her. Though, her mother had often cried as she did so, missing her husband terribly and unwillingly letting that grief spill over into everything. Fuu, once again, refused to follow the mistakes of her mother. Her daughter would never know her own inner demons.

Carrying Kiki in her arms, the scent of "child" heavy in her nose, Fuu laid Kiki to bed, where, despite cries for a story, she fell asleep almost instantly. Fuu ran her work-hardened hand across Kiki's forehead, feeling the fever that lurked there and knew that she would not be working tomorrow. Kiki only fell asleep so fast when she wasn't feeling well, though she'd never tell her mother that. No, Kiki would rather run and be free to play, rather than stay home and in bed to get well.

Fuu left her daughter's door slightly open, the better to hear her call in the night. She quietly walked down the hall, and unwittingly walked into a "private" talk between the men.

"I do not know anything of Kiyoko's father. Perhaps you should ask Fuu herself, rather than sneak about behind her back," Lee was saying as he glared at Mugen and Jin, both leaning over the table conspiratorially.

"They're too dense to do that, Lee. I wonder if they realize that the second they started to ask questions about me, I was told and warned by at least a dozen people. If I hadn't sent out the word to leave them be, they be skewered by at least a dozen swords by now." Mugen and Jin looked alternately guilty and nonchalant. Fuu explained. "The shogun still searches for me. I have safeguards in place. The town knows of my past, and protects me willingly."

Lee stood suddenly, his eyes warm as they gazed at Fuu. "I must check in at work, then continue home. My wife misses me."

Fuu nodded, and clasped hands with Lee before he left, calling out as he walked out, "Magistrates are always such work-a-holics!"

Mugen leaned back in his chair and stared dubiously. "Magistrate? He's the law?"

Fuu nodded as she shut and locked the door. "I made damn sure the law knew I was here and were on my side when I settled down." She glared at him. "I'm not an idiot."

Mugen shrugged and picked at what was left of his rice, before surreptitiously stealing the rest of Jin's dumplings.

Jin focused on Fuu's face, almost as if he were trying to see right through her. "Who is her father?"

"He's dead, it doesn't matter. How's Shiro?"

"Why do you ask?"

"It's been three years. She's free of her husband, and I assume has left the island already."

"She decided to wait a couple more months before leaving, letting her former husband and his debtors ease away and not be a bother to her. She shall be leaving the island within the next week."

"You'll go to her." It wasn't a question.

Jin treated it as one. "Why would I?"

Fuu smiled and patted him patronizingly on the head. "You love her. Of course you're going."

He pouted. "I'd planned on it. I would, if you'd allow, return here with her. She and I have been seeking a place to settle."

Fuu was surprised. "You want to move here? With me?"

"Not with you, but yes, in this town. It is...quaint."

Fuu shrugged and started to gather the empty plates to be washed. "I don't care, I just wonder if your enemies will take advantage of it."

Jin's expression darkened. "Most of my enemies have learned by now to leave me be."

Fuu nodded before idly grabbing Mugen by the ear and dragging him to the sink to wash dishes. She dried her hands on a towel as he started, facing Jin as she did so. "Been busy killing people, Jin?"

"Yes."

She nodded. "Why do you want to stay here?"

"If you've need of me..."

"I don't need you. I can take care of myself these days."

Mugen snorted. "Don't seem so."

"What does that mean?" She asked angrily, not needing to look at Jin to know that he obviously agreed.

"It means you let some man take advantage of you, and get you knocked up. You can't take care of yourself, but what do you expect? You're a chick."

Fuu fought the urge to throttle Mugen and turned to Jin. "You agree?"

Jin didn't nod, didn't do anything, but then again, he didn't have to.

Fuu sighed, and counted to ten in her head. It didn't work. She picked up a pan and slammed Mugen in the head.

"Goddamn bitch! Why'd you do that!"

"Because you're stupid, and if I could reach Jin, I'd have done it to him too!" She shook her finger at both of them. "You're both idiots! I have taken care of myself for three years, through nine months of pregnancy, and the terrible twos! I don't need men to do business for me! I don't need men at all! If I did have need of a man, I sure as hell would pick better than two criminals and murderers!"

Jin stared at her coolly, and Mugen swore and glares. Finally, the tension eased as she calmed down, and they all got their tempers and thoughts under control.

Fuu set down the pan, and smoothed her hands down the front of her dress. Those same hands shook as they did so, but no one said anything. "I let you stay here out of old memories and a sense of nostalgia. Stop pushing it, or you will leave and not return. Stop this foolish idea of finding...her father. He's dead already. Mugen killed him, and he's not returning to take blame for his actions. I can take care of myself, and don't appreciate your meddling."

Mugen gently took her hands. "We only do what we think is right."

She took it back. "I don't care. Just stop." Both men heard the edge of tears in her voice, and dropped the issue. Fuu walked from the room, leaving the air of tension and despair behind. The men looked at each and silently agreed. It'd always been a silent rule between the two of them that any man who made Fuu cry must die. They couldn't very well kill themselves however. And for the first time in years, Mugen and Jin found themselves caring that they'd hurt someone else. For the first time in years, they regretted their actions.


	9. Midnight Singer

For periodic updates on what I'm doing, or why it's taking so long for the updates or whatnot, I recommend hitting my profile. I keep a monthly, and sometimes weekly, letter for my readers there. Also, in my forum, you can find previews of some of the stories I'll be starting soon, or you can just drop in and randomly talk or ask questions. I do random with the best of them, so you prolly won't surprise me with anything you say or ask.

* * *

**Chapter Nine: Midnight Singer**

_Oh midnight singer  
Outside my window  
Oh how your songs  
Come in strange and low  
And in my bed I lay silent  
Hoping you'd stay  
Hoping you'd go_

The rest of the night passed in tense civility, the trio ignoring the burning question of just who Fuu had given herself to, and the consequences of that action. It was a matter of honor, and even Fuu's objections wouldn't stop the men from seeking to return it to her. It was a samurai code, and Mugen and Jin were nothing if not samurais.

By midnight, Kiyoko was tired beyond redemption, having been tempted into staying up much past her bed time by the prospect of listening to the music on the wind from town. Tonight was festival night, celebration of the ships returning from sea, their bellies full of fish to bring the village prosperity. There would be food, dancing, and general revelry. If Fuu had been alone, she'd have sent Kiki on to Lee's house and joined the crowd down there, losing herself in the anonymity it afforded her. She'd have drunk a little, danced a little, and perhaps even have gambled a little. She never did any of those things often, less even to the extremes of them. She couldn't remember the last time she'd danced at all.

They all stood or sat on the front porch, only the lights of the village giving any sense of illumination. The moon was clouded over and the trees whistled in the breeze, bringing laughter and shouts and not a little music their way. Mugen watched as distant figures moved about the buildings down there, some of them steadily and some of them drunken enough to be seen as such from this distance. Jin held a drowsy Kiki in his arms, her eyes closed as she hummed along with the distant music, slowly moving back and forth in a rocking motion that Jin didn't realize he was supposed to mimic for her, Fuu also swayed slowly to that beat, her eyes closed. Mugen turned from the village to watch her. Jin watched Mugen.

Finally, she spoke. "Jin?"

"Hmm?"

"Did you ever dance with Shiro?"

Jin raised an eyebrow over Kiki's head, his mind going to the gutters and assuming she meant a different kind of dance that she intended. "No, but we came quite close."

Fuu stopped dancing and resisted the urge to throw her shoe at him. "I meant real dancing."

"Like that?" He asked, his head inclining towards the village square where couples were entwined in the new "dance craze". It was called the Waltz, and it was from Britain. All the 'hot' celebrity couples were doing it.

"Well, yeah."

"No. Shiro and I were never in a situation that gave the opportunity. The few times I visited her on the island...we were busy doing other things."

Mugen leered. "Like what?"

Fuu did throw her shoe at him. "There is a child present."

"I know, but even if he is a child, he did naughty things, and I want to hear."

"I meant Kiyoko."

"Ha! Then you missed one."

Fuu ground her teeth and glared at him. Why did he always have to be so irritatingly irreverent?

"Why did you ask, Fuu?" Jin interrupted, before further violence caused the child to awaken. She was snoring lightly, but her eyes popped open every few seconds to take in the situation anew.

Fuu shrugged, stepping off the steps and onto the cool grass. "I was just thinking that I can't remember the last time I danced with anyone."

Mugen grinned. "Well, we can't have that." He joined her on the grass, and to Jin's amusement, did a strange little jig. He then proceeded to take Fuu's hands and spin her around in circles.

For all his insidious good humor (which was strange considering that for the entire time she'd known him, his good humor usually involved people dying and/or being hurt) (where the hell was all this silliness coming from?), Fuu laughed as he spun her, only quieting when Jin made a sharp motion as Kiki started to wake back up, her mouth opening in a half-whine, half-yawn. With a sigh, he glared at the two on the lawn and stood. "I'll put Kiki in bed."

Fuu, still holding Mugen's hand (and ignoring her feelings about doing so), nodded. "You might have to read her a story to get her to settle down again."

Jin nodded and walked into the dark house, Kiki's tiny pale arms wrapped around his neck, her solemn brown eyes staring over his shoulder drowsily at the couple lit from behind by the town. They stood there, cast in shadows, holding hands and looking solemn. Kiyoko dreamt of dancing that night.

Fuu watched as her daughter was carried down the hall, smiling as she turned back to Mugen. "Now, let's really dance."

Mugen wiggled his eyebrows. "With Jin in the house? Kinky."

She smacked him lightly on the head. "Stop being a perv. Now, put your hand here," she demonstrated by moving his hand to her waist. "And hold my other hand like this," she took his hand, "and then we move."

"Move how?"

"Umm...in circles."

"Sounds repetitive."

"Aww, you've been using your Word-A-Day calendar."

"Stop being bitchy."

"You're dancing, Mugen," Fuu said as she smiled, ignoring his insults as they slowly moved around the yard. The ground was uneven and made for tough goings, but the pleasure in being held in a man's arms, even Mugen's, overshadows the discomfort of it. They were silent for a few moments, both growing used to the strangeness of the movement. Down in the village, the music changed, becoming even slower. Mugen and Fuu changed pace automatically, growing closer, though not intentionally as they did so. Neither noticed when Jin returned and lingered in the shadows watching them.

They danced around that courtyard for a few minutes, Fuu breaking out in a wide smile every couple of minutes, while Mugen remained ever intense-eyed at her. It was often difficult to tell just what Mugen was thinking. Almost as hard as it was to read him, it was easy to read Fuu. At the moment, she was thinking that Mugen had changed in the past three years. One would assume that a year in prison would make a man harder, but for Mugen, it seemed to relieve him of some of the burdens that had made him so bitter so early in life. He had his scars and tattoos from the time he did, but they no longer bore him down to the ground. There was a relaxed air to him, in this time and place, that wasn't faked. He was comfortable here, with her. Or at least, that's what Fuu thought. Mugen's actual personality and motives for doing what he did were often not so clear. One needed a magic eight ball to get a straight answer out of him, and even then, it was a guessing game as to if it was true.

Jin cleared his throat, and the couple stepped apart quickly. Fuu smiled and walked over to join Jin on the porch. Before she could get to the steps, he spoke quickly. "I'm leaving tomorrow. For Shiro."

Fuu froze, but nodded. "Okay."

"I'll return within two weeks."

"That's nice," Fuu said. What Jin did with his time was no longer of much concern to her. He was an adult, she was an adult, and that foolish schoolgirl crush she'd had once was long faded. As the days passed in these men's company, Fuu was finding that the schoolgirl was gone, and in its place was a grown woman with a weakness for bushy-haired men with ink. Not that she'd admit such a thing.

"Is that acceptable?" Jin asked, his face stiff with all the repressed emotion that upper-class citizens possessed. It was in moments like this that Fuu realized just how far removed from her own way of life he'd been raised.

"It's fine, Jin. When you return, you and she are welcome to stay here," Fuu replied, just as courteous. Yes, it was most difficult, the bringing of another woman into your former lust object's home, but with perfect manners, anything is possible.

Jin nodded, and briefly smiled. "I think I shall sojourn now."

Mugen raised an eyebrow as he walked up to Fuu, throwing his arm around her neck. "Oooh, fancy word."

Fuu tittered, but pushed his arm off. "Like you know any."

Neither noticed as Jin slipped away.

"I know fancy words."

"No, you know 'fancy' girls."

"Hey, whores are people too."

"I don't doubt it. You know them better than you know fancy words."

"That hurts, babe. Hurts."

"You know what hurts, Mugen? My feet. You stepped on my toes."

"I can't help it that you've got big feet."

Does anyone blame her that she so often feels the urge to do violence against him?


	10. Movin' Along

I hate clothes. I hate wearing clothes. Viva nekkid-ness.

* * *

**Chapter Ten: Movin' Along**

_Light of the morning day_

_Sadly it will not stay_

_This perfect pink for too long couple of hours from now_

_All the sunflowers will frown and turn_

_For the sun is too strong

* * *

_

Mugen eyed the little female over the table, not entirely surprised by her bold approach. She walked around the table and slid into his lap, and he didn't even try to lie to himself that he didn't enjoy it. He did; it was one of his few pleasures, having a pretty girl to keep him company. The girl cuddled up to the samurai, idly playing with the ink at his wrists. Her eyes were half-lidded when she looked up at him, and her lips pouted prettily. "When's Momma getting home?"

Mugen sighed, standing and lifting the girl into his arms as he did. Together, they started to pace the front room, a full-on temper tantrum in the works of Kiki's stormy thoughts. Mugen recognized it from her mother's face. She was about to pitch a fit. "She'll be home soon."

Kiki pouted. "And Uncle Jin?"

"He'll be a bit longer."

"How much longer?"

"A week."

"What's a week?"

"Seven days."

Kiki thought on that. "But that's forever!"

"Nope. Know how long forever is? One year, two months, and five days."

She cocked her head to the side, thinking on just how long that had to be. "Prolly."

Mugen laughed, lifting her into the air and wiggling her from side to side, causing a spree of giggles to erupt. "Don't you even wanna know why?"

"Nope."

"I'll tell you anyways. That's exactly how long I spent in one-room."

"Why?"

"I did bad things."

"What?"

"...bad things. Things little girls shouldn't hear about from me," Mugen explained, pacing again. Though her thoughts had been redirected, and her tantrum averted, all that energy was coming down as well, making her tired and cranky.

"Tell me," Kiki demanded, fisting her hand in Mugen's hair. It occurred to Mugen that this was the first time he'd ever been alone with Fuu's child.

"No," he replied, and she pouted again, her eyes wide and innocent, and oddly reminiscent of Fuu's even if they were a totally different color.

"Please?"

"Let's just say, that I got rid of things people didn't want to get rid of yet. And I made money on it."

"Oh," Kiki replied, laying her head on his shoulder. "Okay."

Mugen knew she couldn't possibly understand what he'd said and let it go. She couldn't really understand that all those days in that cell had taught him something no amount of fights ever had. In that cell, Mugen had learned peace. Days without human conversation, his only interactions coming in the morning with the delivery of food and the removal of his chamber pot; Mugen had had a lot of time to think. What had he thought about? His life, his past, his sword, and his friends. In the end, despite hating every single day in that room, he'd come out of it a better man. It was all that really kept him going, was the thought that he was a better man than he once was.

Kiki was humming on his shoulder, singing herself to sleep, and Mugen swayed with her as she did. She was small and fragile in his arms, light to his dark. The room was dim, the sun setting, and he didn't bend to turn up the kerosene lamp on a nearby table. He was more comfortable in the dark. Together, he and she danced in that dark place, and Mugen found himself remembering things he'd thought he'd forgotten. Forced himself to forget; now forcing himself to remember.

His mother had always smelled of heavy incense. At one point, she'd worked in a teahouse, very much like Fuu when he'd first met her. What happened after was a story he'd overheard many times as a child, a story he doubted the people who raised him ever wanted him to hear.

His mother, a teahouse waitress, met his father, a fisherman, when she was only fourteen. She'd bloomed early, and had always drawn curious glances her way, but had been raised modest. She'd never reciprocated, that is until his father. They'd courted for almost two years. Love first fragile, then became stronger than anyone had ever thought it could. They'd married traditionally, in front of the entire town. Respectable, traditional. Then, on the first annual eve of their wedding, his mother became aware of Mugen's own existence, within her womb. She'd been so happy with the news for weeks; his father had been out to sea for over a month. On the day his father had been supposed to return, a big storm came up suddenly. Winds so fast you couldn't even leave your house, the sea rose high enough that it washed away the docks. It lasted for a week. When it was over, there was no sign of his father or his ship.

For months after, his mother pined. She cried, screamed, refused to eat or sleep. She tore herself apart. Around her seventh month of pregnancy, seriously underweight and in danger of losing Mugen, her only tie to her lost husband, she came around. Started to take care of herself, started to live again. After he was born, things were good for a while. A month, maybe two. Then she lost the house her husband had bought her. She hadn't worked in months, hadn't paid bills, and no amount of sympathy on her landlord's part would let her stay there any longer. She'd had nowhere to go; a seventeen-year-old widowed mother.

She'd tried many things, but in the end turned to the stop-all of money problems for women. She became a whore. Mugen spent the next thirteen years being raised by whores, always surrounded by women and warriors, and had loved every second of it. Along the way, he'd acquired three half-brothers, and two half-sisters. His mother had been very fertile, and sometimes, he thought she'd been deliberately. By the time he became a man, at thirteen, any semblance of that young, sweet mother he could recall from his early childhood was gone, replaced by a woman with a painted face and a quiet voice, who couldn't even bear to look at her oldest son for he looked so like his father.

Mugen had stayed as long as he could, raising his siblings, defending the house, and learning the ways of a woman (thank you, Suji, for your wonderful tutoring). When he looked back on those times, it only reminded him of why he was so often only comfortable in the presence of women. It also reminded him of why he'd always been careful to never father a child. Children were death, capable of tearing apart a man at the seams.

At his shoulder, Kiki snored softly and he turned to return her to her room, as he did so, noticing that Fuu stood at the doorway watching as he swayed in place with her sleeping daughter. Mugen continued past as if he hadn't seen her.

When he returned, she was still standing there, her eyes guarded but her mouth soft. "You're good with her."

"I usually am good with women. They love me," he replied with a big grin and lascivious stare. He ambled closer, until Fuu was within an arm's reach.

"I know. I've traveled with you, remember? Every other town was some girl wanting to bear your children."

That brought back his thoughts of the moment before, and a small but bitter smile replaced the carefree one of before. "You do realize I didn't sleep with those women, right?"

Her own soft smile faltered. "You didn't?"

"No. Tempting, but no. I was caught up on this other girl."

Fuu leaned her head back, her neck stretching long and pale before him and subtle scent of flower coming to him in the breeze. "Who?"

Mugen smiled. "Wouldn't you like to know."

"I would."

"Why?"

"I'm curious who could tame the wild beast."

"Curiosity killed the cat."

"Satisfaction brought it back."

They laughed together, quietly, wary of the child in the next room. Mugen leaned closer, his breath on her ear. "Jin has left?"

"Yeah," she replied, ducking her head. "He said he'll be back in a week."

Mugen nodded, ever closer. "We're all alone."

"Kiyoko's in the next room."

"She doesn't count."

Fuu cocked her eyebrow. "Really?"

"Really."

Then, Mugen kissed Fuu, right on the lips. She liked to imagine shock was what had her not-smacking him, and not the pleasure that ribboned through her at the light touch. He stepped back and smiled.

"Why'd you do that?"

"Curiosity."

"Your curiosity is going to get you hurt, Mugen." She sounded dead serious when she said that, and her eyes were dark with some untold emotion.

"Some people tell me I'm a masochist."

"Well, I'm not a sadist, so don't do it again," Fuu replied, stepping past him and starting to walk by.

He grabbed her arm before she got too far. "And who's going to stop me?"

Fuu smiled, and it was just as bitter as his had been. "You are."

Mugen let her walk away, but his thoughts were a closed circle, going round and round again. She was right.


	11. Black Eyed Susan

A/N: Okay, so I've realized something. A reviewer of last chapter pointed out to me that I seem to be losing the point of my story, and it's true. I am. I'm getting caught up in Mugen and Fuu, and I'm forgetting the entire point of why I wrote this. So, I thought on it, and I've been thinking.

We're all on notice. This story will last only a few more chapters. I'd intended to make it longer, to draw it out, but it seems I can't do that without losing a bit of the mystery, which I don't want to do. The entire premise of the story is the mystery.

So. Just so y'all know.

* * *

**Chapter Eleven: Black-Eyed Susan

* * *

**

_Twenty days walking so lonely and talking to myself and the rocks and sand_

Got me to thinking 'bout going and drinking in a tavern with a clean-shaven man

Just when I thought all souls had been bought by the devil here long ago

There did I see when I knelt to my knee a little Texas flower grow

Black-eyed susan by the roadside blooming all yellow like sunshine, red like wine

Flower like you in a desert this cruel; my, my, you're a rare, rare find.

**

* * *

**

She poured herself some more saki, and settled deeper into the cushions on the floor. Across from her, the sun danced in the trees, causing oddly shaped shadows to linger there. Kiki was out with Lee, Mugen was off fishing, and Jin had yet to return. For the first time in a long time, Fuu was alone. She wasn't particularly pleased with the fact.

For almost two and a half years, she'd constantly been surrounded by people. She was at work, with people, or at home, with Kiyoko. Kiyoko who was in point of fact, closer to three than the two she'd told Mugen and Jin. When the trio had parted ways those long three years ago, Fuu had already been a month pregnant. It had taken the men a month to recover from their battles enough to actually walk away from her. She hadn't known then, or Fuu didn't think she'd have been able to let them leave.

As she sipped the alcohol, letting it inebriate her and cause her to lose her thoughts amidst painful memories, she acknowledged to a small part of herself, that for a long time, she hadn't let herself even think on what happened that day. The day Mugen had almost died. The day Jin had almost died. The day she had almost died; the day her quest ended with her father's death. She'd never looked at sunflowers the same.

Fuu leaned back and watched as the shadows danced on the ceilings, moving back and forth just like the sunflowers did in the wind. Memories are hard things, bringing back past shames and unforgivables. She imagined that that was why she'd put off the alone time for so long. She wanted to lose herself in her new life and forgive herself for the foolish things she'd done at that time so long ago.

She drank the first months of her pregnancy. She'd spent her days in bars, losing herself in drink, hoping against hope that somehow the drink would stop the abomination growing within her, that it would just disappear and she'd wake up to find it was all a dream. That she was still walking Japan with Mugen and Jin, still the child she'd once been.

It was no dream, and right around the time her belly had started to grow, Fuu had come to a realization. For the first time in her life, she was alone. Truly alone, but for that little life within her. For weeks, she'd cried, so unsure of what to do that she couldn't leave her father's house. His nurse and keeper stayed with her, caring for her when she refused to do it herself.

Eventually, even that passed. Fuu stayed in bed, her womb steadily growing and her sorrow as well, almost in proportion. On the day of a bad storm, one with wind and rain capable of wiping the island from memory, Fuu got up from bed and stepped into the maelstrom. She stood on that cliff and she begged for forgiveness from God. For her sins, for the baby, for the baby's father's sins. She was so tempted in that moment to throw herself from that cliff and end the memories that she actually took a step to that cliff.

She cried. She cried for so long and so hard that for months afterward she couldn't spare another. He found her there, the priest, fresh from a ship from England. He'd come to the island, looking for the rumors of Christians in hiding, and he saw her. He held her in that storm, listened to what she said, and he absolved her. In the wake of her worst nightmare, she found God again, and found a peace she hadn't known existed.

Even now, living in this small village, far from that island and the memories that haunted her when she was there, she could feel her Faith and it eased her mind. Her father had left her one thing, one thing to carry her through eternity, and that was his God. She'd never told anyone of her religious beliefs, but she taught Kiyoko them, and her daughter held a light within her that convinced Fuu she made the right decisions. Kiyoko would be clean of her mother and father's sins, because she'd been baptized as a child in the Christian faith. She was fresh for this world, and if Fuu had any say in it, she would never know the pain and the self-torture her mother had endured in her pregnancy.

Fuu stood and pulled a small box from it's hiding place atop a shelf, higher than anyone could truly use it, and the only thing on it was this small box. Setting down the container of saki, she opened it and stared at the necklace within. It was a crucifix, a gift from Father Pedro, the man who'd saved her life that day. He'd given it to her the day she left the island, seven months pregnant and unsure of where to go. She'd known only that she couldn't stay.

Under the necklace, several letters were concealed within, from her Priest. He'd been deported back to England within weeks of her leaving, and still sent her letters. In times like this, she looked to him for guidance. In a way, she supposed that he'd supplanted Mugen and Jin in her life. Without someone to guide her and protect her in a way, she'd become lost and self-destructive. With that someone, she could figure out what to do and how to go about doing it.

She wasn't the strong woman she portrayed to others. She was still only a girl. Eighteen and a mother, so young and still so unlearned. Fuu relied heavily on the aid of others, and she knew that she was lucky to have them. It could easily have been at any time that'd she'd been killed or sold. Instead, strangers had rallied around her, protected her, provided for her, and given her the chance to live a good life.

Fuu had always relied on the kindness of strangers, and the love of good friends. Her life was centered on Kiyoko, and her happiness and health. Concealing the box again far above her head, Fuu drank again from the container of saki. Did it matter that she herself wasn't happy? If her daughter was, she could convince herself that it was worth it, even if it meant she had to make her friends leave.

Fuu watched from the door as in the distance Lee and Kiki started up the path to the house from the village. She could remember many things when she was alone, but that didn't mean she wanted to.

* * *

_She lay in the dust of the building, her wrists bruised, her face cut, and her head pounding. She could feel the aches and pains that pulsed in various places of her body, and she watched through mostly closed eyes as the man removed himself from atop her. She stared into the shadows and waited for him to leave. He didn't leave, just sat near that wall and watched her watch him. They didn't say anything for a long time. Fuu could feel any semblance of thought fade away as she lay there, a husk of the bright being she'd once been only hours ago. She felt like a fragile shell, and that one touch would destroy her. Why had she come to this island? Traveled so far with the two men, just to see another man? Men were scum, death, bane of the world. She hated them, with fire in her heart. If she had a knife she would kill them all. Bastards. For the first time in her life, Fuu knew hate. She'd known anger. Rage. Never this pure emotion. Never hate. She knew it now. If only it was directed at men alone. Yet, it wasn't. She felt it for everyone and everything, including herself. She blamed herself, because she hadn't listened, hadn't been able to stop him, and yet, more than anything, she blamed Mugen.

* * *

_

"Mommy!" The child shouted as she caught sight of her mother in the shadows. She started to run to her, but Lee picked her up and carried her over, recognizing the signs of a binge.

Lee, Fuu's best friend since that day she'd first appeared in his village, knew what was going on, because he'd been forced to clean up after it several times in the past three years. Women were fragile things, capable of breaking so easily. He had a respect for women, and for Fuu in particular. He knew the things she'd endured during her pregnancy and before it. He knew that every couple of months, if left alone for too long, the memories became too much and she sought alcohol to make them stop. It never worked, but old habits die hard.

He stopped a few feet from her, and studied her eyes. She was far gone into the bottle, and it would be hours before she got sober again. Lee set Kiki down and used a hand on her shoulder to keep her from running to Fuu. When this far gone, there was really no telling what Fuu would do. Inside that small woman, such rage and hate was hidden that it could rarely be seen. Lee had the scars to prove that it existed though, and when given fuel to use, it reared it's ugly head in many ways. Fuu's eyes were glazed over and he could tell that she was remembering things best left forgotten.

Kiyoko started to walk past her mother, her eyes pleading as she tried to understand why her mother wasn't answering her, and in her young mind she was lost, because she couldn't remember what made her mother so sad. Was it because her Uncle Jin was gone? Was it something she'd done?

Kiyoko stood beside her mother, and before Lee could stop her, reached for her mother's hand. "Mommy? Why are you sad?"

They stood frozen for seconds, as Fuu turned her hateful eyes to her child, and in that drunken state, she didn't see the daughter she loved more than life. She saw every man who loved her and left her and raped her over and over, leaving her emotions a turmoil and her mind broken. She pulled her hand from that small child, and threw it back, across the small face and sent her sailing across the room, a wordless scream torn from her mother. As Kiyoko stared in horror at the creature that was not her mother, Lee threw his massive arms around the screaming woman, holding her still, not knowing what she intended to do.

Lost in those memories, Fuu screamed and screamed, tears blinding her as she struggled against arms so tight that she couldn't move, but she could feel it, feel him, feel everything in her head. She screamed and struggled and Lee was sure that someone from the village would hear and come and there would be trouble. There was only so much he could keep quiet.

He pulled Fuu to the ground, holding her and rocking her as the screams quieted and the sobs stopped. She sat there, her eyes open but unseeing. She was still crying, tears leaving tracks on her face, but she wasn't there anymore. Her mind had left, leaving her body there to face the damage.

Kiyoko sat in the corner, watching the scene before her, holding her cheek but not crying. She stared, her large eyes so dark from that corner that Lee could hardly bear it. He lifted her damn-near-comatose mother into his arms and carried her into her bedroom, laying her on the bed and leaving her there to sleep off the stupor of saki. In the living room, he opened his arms to Kiki and she flew to him. She still didn't cry.

"What did I do?"

"You didn't do anything. Your mother does not mean it."

"What do you mean?" Kiki asked, her cheek already bruising and her eye puffing up slightly.

Lee smiled gently, running a large finger down that face. "I'll show you." Lee picked up a small decorative mask from the wall and carried Kiki into her mother's room, where Fuu still lay unmoving. Kiki tensed in his arms, burrowing deeper. Lee sat beside her mother, settling Kiki on his hip. "Your mommy is not your mommy, right now. She's someone else."

"Who is she?"

"She's someone your mommy tries to keep locked away, everyday. To protect you."

"Who?"

"A monster. Sometimes, your mommy can't keep her locked away and she gets out and she does mean things," Lee explained. He lay the mask on Fuu's face, and through the small eyeholes, Fuu looked at him, comprehending just a bit of what was going on.

"Why can't she just send the monster away?" Kiki asked, reaching over and cautiously touching the mask.

"Because the monster is a part of her."

"When will Mommy come back?"

Lee smiled bitterly. "Soon. For now, she has to fight the monster alone."

Kiki nodded sagely, and warily crawled onto the bed beside her mother. Sure that Lee couldn't hear, she whispered softly into the mask's ear. "I won't be bad no more, Mommy. Come back."

Lee fought his own tears, and knew that in the morning Fuu would be herself again. She always was. He remembered a few times, when Kiyoko was still a baby, coming to see Fuu and finding her curled in the corner while the baby cried across the room, a saki container empty beside her. He'd take Kiki, care for her, and when Fuu was herself again, bring her home. It'd been over a year since one of those times, and he'd thought she'd finally moved past it.

Kiki crawled back into Lee's arms and together they watched as Fuu cried in that bed, her sobs quiet. The day grew dark, and Fuu slipped into sleep, an uneasy sleep permeated with whimpers and small moans. Lee knew what she dreamed of, of lost islands and memories most painful. Kiki imagined that her mother was fighting a battle with some faceless beast, with many arms and legs; her Mommy would win though, because of course, her mother was the bravest and most powerful Mommy she knew. She would remember tonight though. For her entire life, she would remember and she would watch for the monster to appear again. Eventually, she might even have a monster of her own.

Eventually, Kiyoko slept, and Lee carried her into her room. He stayed that night, watching over the two girls, both of them damaged in their own ways. When Mugen returned, Lee said nothing, just watched as the man went into the guest room and slept. Lee wondered if the warrior realized that once again, this was all his fault.


	12. Wind is Blowing Stars

A/N: Okay, so, I'm sitting here, writing, watching La Femme Nikita (a USA network series broadcast in the late 90's-early 00's, with all it's delicious forbidden love and danger plots), and I'm remembering just why I love Samurai Champloo. Love and fighting and war, all entwined makes things so much fun, don'cha know?

I'm also eating cookies.

FYI.

* * *

**Chapter Twelve: Wind is Blowing Stars**

_All the colors spin, all the colors spin  
Blackness from a pitcher pours  
Stars come blowing through the door  
Your eyes they mirror pools of ink  
Your heart and mind combine to drink  
From the puzzle's trough  
But the troubles can be solved_

**

* * *

**

The dawn came quietly, without any sounding horns or singsong alarm bells. Fuu lay on her side and watched as the yellow light crept across her paper-thin walls. She could hear the people outside her room move about. Kiyoko woke up with a small screech, all worries of the day before forgotten briefly as the clamor of rice cakes came across her. Fuu's daughter adored rice cakes for breakfast, especially with the rare spice cinnamon sprinkled on them. It took two week's pay to buy the small container of the spice, and Fuu rarely used any herself, preferring to save it for her daughter.

Her daughter, who even now most likely bore a bruise on her cheek. A mark of her mother's affection if you will. Fuu turned over onto her back, fingering the small, near invisible scars that marred her hands. Tokens of love from Kiki's father, or rather the knife at his waist that he couldn't be bothered to remove as he raped her.

Sitting up, the mask so gently lay upon her fell to the floor and shattered. She knew how it felt. Standing carefully, Fuu sidestepped the mask and walked to the window. Outside, the town could be seen waking, a few people already out and about, specifically the fisherman and the storeowners. On any other day, she'd be down there, preparing for the opening of her restaurant. Today, she had neither the will nor energy to do so.

At her doorway, Lee stood and watched as Fuu watched the outside world go by. She had a look of pure isolation on her face. Thoughts he couldn't even imagine must be racing through her mind. Pushing away and into the room, Lee slowly laid his hand on her shoulder. She didn't jump, almost as if she were expecting him to do such a thing.

"You have big hands," she said unexpectedly, turning to stare at him with fathomless eyes.

"I'm a big man."

"You are. I'm always surrounding myself with men who are bigger than me. Taller, stronger; generally bigger. Is it any wonder what happens to a girl who does that?"

Lee shook his head, his dark hair slipping from the top-knot and dangling in front of his eyes. "Don't go there, Fuu."

"Why not? If I tell Mugen and Jin what they want to know, it's what they'll think. Is it any wonder?" She said sardonically, wrapping her arms around herself as if cold, turning back to the sight of the town.

"They won't."

"They will," she said forcefully. "It's my fault, what happened. I left them behind because I was so afraid to let them go. I didn't think of what I might mean to them. Of what would happen to me or to them beyond that point. I wanted only to meet my father."

Lee nodded. "Was it worth it?"

Fuu watched as her daughter ran out the front door, followed quickly by a running Mugen. They chased each other around in circles before Mugen's longer legs finally overcame the child's faster ones. He threw her high in the air and when she came back down she was squealing with glee, her diminutive features lit up with pleasure. Lee brought her attention back to the room with a small prod on her arm.

"Was it worth it?"

Fuu smiled bitterly. "No."

"What about her?" Lee asked, nodding his head at Kiyoko.

"She's all of me. All that was left. I don't think I even survived that journey."

"Something survived," Lee observed, turning to leave the room.

Fuu nodded slowly, and whispered so he wouldn't hear, "Yeah, the anger."

Lee walked out of the room and out the front door, taking possession of Kiki as he did so. Mugen watched as the two walked on down to the village, and wondered what was taking Fuu so long to get up.

"Hey, pokey! Get your ass up! You're gonna open up late as it is! How am I supposed to mooch off someone who ain't got money?" Mugen continued as he walked to her doorway. He froze at the sight of her staring listlessly out the window. "What's wrong?"

Fuu turned to look at her, her eyes large and luminous within her wane face. "Everything."

Mugen had never seen her looking so distraught. Not even when he and Jin almost died. Not even the many times he and Jin had almost died. Mugen stood there for a few seconds, a strange itching in his palms. He studied the sensation, and realized with some discomfort that the itch was from the urge to comfort. For the first time in his entire pitiful selfish existence, he felt the urge to comfort another being, and not sexually.

He stuttered out an offer of help. "Can I...uh...do anything?"

Fuu nodded slowly. "I need you to leave."

He stared at her blindly confused. "What?"

She spoke slowly. "I need you to leave."

"Why?"

"Because with you here, I can't forget. I can't ignore the past. I want to ignore my past, Mugen. If I don't, I hurt those around me."

Mugen didn't even pretend to understand. However, he did connect a few dots in his head. "What happened to Kiki's face, Fuu?"

She smiled bitterly and gingerly took a seat on the edge of her bed. "I remembered things from my past and I couldn't handle it."

Anger colored his voice. "So you hit your daughter?"

"No. I hit _him_, Mugen. I hit him because when I saw her, I saw him."

Another dot connected. "The father."

Fuu laughed, again, so bitter, and so unlike anything he'd ever heard from her. "Yes. The father."

"Who is he, Fuu?"

She looked him into the eyes, all amusement gone. "It all comes back to Daddy, Mugen. You and I met because I wanted to find my father. I found him, only to be disappointed. And here you are, on your own quest to salvage my honor and find Kiki's father, but you're not going to be disappointed, Mugen." She stood and poked him in the chest with a long pointy finger. "You're going to be devastated."

She went to move past him, but his long arms wrapped around her, forcing her to face him. "Stop playing games, Fuu. Tell me."

She smiled in his face, and it wasn't the nice girl he'd once known. He was now facing the wrathful woman.

"You know, Mu', in a way, you're the father." He stepped back, shocked, releasing her from his grip. She continued to smile at him, and followed him as he continued to back away. "See, it's all your fault. Kiki wouldn't be here without your participation in my life."

"How is it my fault?" He demanded, no longer retreating. "I damn sure never fucked you, Fuu, cause I'm sure I'd have remembered that."

His coarse language threw her for a minute, but she came right back blazing.

"Oh, yeah, Mugen, though I'm sure many ladies would prefer to forget being with you."

Mugen grinned evilly in her face. "Kept track, didn' ya?"

She spit in that face. "I didn't need to."

He stepped closer. "You wanted to."

She didn't allow that nearness to affect her, or so she told herself. "I never even thought about it."

He stepped closer again, emotions warring in those dark eyes. "Oh, you thought about it. Hell, I bet you dreamed about it."

"Ha! Those are called nightmares."

Only inches remained between them; scant, tension-filled inches. Then, unable to stand it any longer, they kissed. She could barely reach him standing on her tiptoes, a problem easily rectified when he wrapped his arms around her hips and drew her up. Her legs went around his waist as he pressed them against the doorframe (the walls, remember, are paper-thin and easily shredded).

Hunger, so long repressed, flared between them, and the kiss was as volatile as the argument had been. Truthfully, the kiss was an extension of the argument, both sides trying to prove a point, though what the point was had been lost amidst the rapid-fire insults.

His hair was softer than it looked. Fuu's few thoughts were of the sensory details, her anger and fiery temper dissipating in the face of unrelenting pain. His hair was soft, his chin covered in painful stubble, and he kept his eyes open, watching her as he mauled her mouth with his thin lips. Somehow, she didn't mind the lack of softness in him; only found the rare gift of it within his features a boon.

Mugen found that he wanted to memorize every detail, even as the memories of past kisses showed him that he always had his eyes closed during a kiss, whether wanting to imagine someone else or not wanting to see who it was he was with. Somewhere in his sub-conscious, he admitted that he closed his eyes because Fuu's image was burned in his brain, and imagination was better than nothing at all. Her tongue was small and fast, matching his pace readily.

Slowly, they stopped kissing; stopped touching as they broke contact and stared at each other on opposite sides of the hall. Mugen's eyes were unreadably dark as the day grew brighter outside.

"You want me to leave?"

Fuu nodded, turning her head so that she didn't have to look at him.

"I'll go," Mugen said quietly, reaching out with those so long arms to turn her face to his, "but you have to tell me. I won't go if you don't."

Fuu nodded again, sliding slowly to the floor. "Kiyoko's father is a man named Umanosuke."

Mugen quirked an eyebrow. "Am I supposed to know that name?"

"I'll help you. He had only one eye and he held me captive as bait to lure you to an island and kill you," Fuu said sardonically, staring Mugen down as he stared incredulously.

The truth was slow to dawn on Mugen. When it did, he too sank to the floor, though he was on his knees. Fuu didn't look at him in that moment, but she could hear his soft whispers in the silence.

"It's my fault. My fault. My fault. It's my fault."


	13. Bedroom Eyes

This is the last chapter. Are you ready? Are you readAY?! Okay.

_Dedicated to Glod, who forgoes doing essays for reading my work. You're my favorite.

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_

**Chapter Thirteen: Bedroom Eyes

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**

_Been traveling all too long this bear-cat trail  
But the love in me's grown stronger than this steel rail  
That I ride back to your bedroom eyes _

Been gone so long baby I wrote you this love song  
My heart the engineer now she's running strong  
Taking me back to your bedroom eyes

Bedroom eyes, bedroom eyes  
Brighter than this starlit summer sky

My cheek against this blackened boxcar dear  
It's dirty and it's cold but the coast is clear  
I'm coming home back to your bedroom eyes

Bedroom eyes, bedroom eyes  
Brighter than this starlit summer sky

* * *

Mugen left her there, sitting on the floor and staring into space, and walked away. He walked away because a good man would. He walked because he didn't want to cause her more pain. Mostly, he walked away because he was a coward.

The road out of town was long and winding, forming a circle around the village, and his mind on other matters, Mugen walked it idly and in no great hurry. He could remember other times in his life when he'd taken the easy way out, the coward's way. Every man he'd ever killed when words would have sufficed? Every woman he'd gotten drunk so he could take advantage? Every hungry child he ignored in favor of his own hunger? What was a coward, but a boy who refused to see?

During his time in prison, Mugen had thought of many things. He'd lived twenty-two long years on this land, and he yet to feel like a real person; a real man. A man wouldn't leave the girl he'd long ago crushed on to cry in her home, over something that was the man's fault. A man would take care of the situation, and the girl. He'd be a man and he'd make everything right. Years of watching his mother search for the right man, and he knew that much. A man was supposed to complete things, complete a home. Without him, life becomes nothing less than a search. Fuu had been another shining example of that.

Her childhood spent without a father, a man, and the first thing she could do when she caught a glimpse of adulthood? Search for that man. Mugen smiled as he remembered the distant gleam in her eyes every time she'd spoken of the sunflower samurai. It'd reminded him of his mother, and the light she'd get when she spoke of his father. Just once, Mugen wanted to see that light in a woman's eyes, and know that it was meant for him.

It wasn't likely to happen, he told himself. I'm just a scrapper, struggling to survive, taking out those who oppose me. The lies we tell ourselves to keep us going. Idly thumbing the top of his sword, the one Fuu had given him; Mugen stepped off the path and looked into the town center. Just there, in the corner with several other children, Kiyoko was staring down an older child, a boy. Instinctively sensing the rising tension between the children, Mugen stepped away from his path, and took notice.

The older boy, with long black hair and sun-darkened skin looked down on fair Kiki and sneered. "My mother says we're not to play with you."

Mugen watched as Kiki drew up her lips in a pout, so like her mother's. "Why?"

"Because you don't have a father. Mother says that since there is no man in your house that we have to watch your mother. She's untrustworthy."

Mugen's fists tightened at the implication, and he was ready to step in and tell the boy off, when Kiki said something that utterly surprised him, and froze him in his steps.

"I do too have a father!" Kiki yelled, drawing a few glances from passersby, but still going quite ignored by most. Mugen, apparently the only one watching, stepped closer, but stayed in the shadows. Kiyoko seemed like she could take care of herself, but just in case...

The boy faltered, taking a step back as Kiki repeated herself and stamped her foot at him. The kids behind him laughed at the sight of the small girl forcing the bully back, but quieted down when he glared. "Yeah? Who?"

Kiki looked down for a minute, trying to think of what a father was, but failing to understand. Finally, she looked back up and smiled smugly. "My uncle Mugen and Jin. They're my father."

The children laughed cruelly; and realizing that she'd said something wrong, Kiki stopped smiling. The leader of the gang of mean children stepped closer, pushing Kiki back and to the ground. "You can't have two fathers! That means you have none!"

Again, the children laughed, and as Kiki found herself about to burst into tears, a pair of long and inked arms stretched down and picked her up. Recognizing the hard strength that held her, Kiki threw herself into Mugen's arms and pouting, pointed a finger at the boy. "He says I don't have a father."

There comes a point in a boy's life when he realizes that to be a man, he must put away his childish ideas and toys, and learn to take the steps to take responsibility for his actions. He learns that as a man, you have to know when it's time to take action, and when it's time to take a step back. Learn when to speak, and when to keep quiet. Most of all, the man learns that no one is perfect, but damn if we don't try.

Mugen touched Kiki's chin, pulling her face back to his. Her large brown eyes sparkled at him, lit by the inner joy she held at seeing him, her current favorite person, and something in that moment made the fates take notice. The air was still, and the wind was slow moving, if at all. The adults that milled watched carefully as the dangerous man held the small child, and had a small but thoughtful grin on his face.

Mugen turned to the bully, and reached down to ruffle his hair irritatingly. "Of course she has a father. I'm her father."

The boy, unaware that even now, the adults were whispering, wondering, and gossiping about this new "revelation", glared at Mugen. "Yeah? Well, where ya been?"

Mugen quirked an eyebrow, before turning the boy around and kicking him lightly in the ass. "Go home, you nosy little shit."

The children ran away after the bully, laughing at the footprint on his rear, and Mugen watched as they went. Kiki still had her arms around his neck, and when he looked down at her, her eyes were solemn. He held her tighter, and turned to start walking home.

That's what it was, you see. He'd been here less than a month, but for all intensive purposes, he was home. He looked forward to waking up to Kiki and Fuu, and to spending all the day with them. He liked practicing his sword moves in the yard and dusk, and looking over his food to see them at the same table. At night, when he couldn't sleep, he even looked forward to walking through the house and hearing the small snores that emitted from Kiki's room, and the louder ones from Fuu's. In this place, Mugen had found something he'd never known he was searching for. He'd found contentment.

"Are you really my father?"

Mugen was silent for a few moments. A lie told couldn't be taken back easily. It spreads like a disease, corrupting all that it touches. Sometimes, the lie or disease isn't bad. Sometimes, it makes things clear and in the time that they have, they can make things right.

"I think I am," he said softly.

Kiki nodded slowly. "Okay."

Then, satisfied with the exchange, she set her head on his shoulder and proceeded to enjoy the walk home by falling asleep. Mugen set his eye on the house in the distance, and didn't look away one time.

She heard him coming up the front stairs, and could hear him murmur softly to Kiyoko as he laid her on her bed, but Fuu couldn't move. She could move from her chair at the kitchen table, not if the entire room was on fire. It'd taken all she had to make him leave. Everything, every memory, every grimace, every rage, fueled into saying the words that she'd needed to say. Truth be told, Fuu was not an angry person, but rather was provoked by the situations she found herself in. When not surrounded by rude, obnoxious, and violent samurais, she was actually quite gentle.

She didn't turn when she felt his presence at the doorframe, and she didn't speak. Maybe, a small part of her was afraid of what she'd say. Maybe, a small part of her was more afraid of what she'd do.

Fuu sat in that chair, trembling, and did nothing.

Mugen watched as she did nothing, and fought the urge to run, to be the old coward he'd once been. Did his body not understand that it was time to stop running? To stop fighting? It was time to be a man, and to just stop.

Kneeling behind her chair, inhaling that sweet scent that had always beguiled him, Mugen fought from gripping her arms and turning her to him, and instead ran his long scarred fingers down her arms, to hold her hands. Pressing his face into her back, he tried to find the words, to explain what he wanted to do, what he didn't, and why he couldn't go. In the end, it was simple.

"I want to stay."

Silence and a small sigh. "I see." She was proud that she managed to make the words cool and calm, and not belie the turmoil inside her.

Mugen cocked his head, leaning forward to press his face into her shoulder, his voice muffled as he spoke again. "Would you stay with me?"

She turned her head a small bit, just enough to see him out of the corner of her eye. "And if I did?"

He smiled, the taste of victory on the edge of tongue. "I'd replace the bad memories with the good."

"And if you can't?"

"Then I'll tell you some of my own bad memories, and you'll replace mine."

Fuu nodded slowly, the conversation seeming so inane, yet the unspoken words of it making her so tense that she could feel every hair on her body, and every breath he breathed against her skin. "Will you protect me?"

His answer was immediate. "Yes."

"Even from myself."

"Only if you promise to protect me from Jin."

She laughed for the first time in two days, and it surprised even her. She stopped almost immediately, her hand flying to her mouth, and she didn't resist when he turned her to face him. "I want..." he started, but shook his head as the words eluded him.

Fuu laid her hand against his cheek, and cocked her head as she studied him. "You've changed."

"Hmmm?"

"From the boy who left me standing at the crossroads three years ago. You've changed."

He nodded, pressing his cheek into her hand, his eyes distant. "I wanted to change."

He could remember those days very clearly. Instead of staying for a vigorous fight with one of the most renowned samurais in Japan, he'd left Jin to it and had gone for Fuu. Rescued her, and forced her to leave him behind, knowing it might mean his death. He'd been willing to give his life for her. Even then.

"Why?" Fuu asked, still holding his cheek, and though she didn't know it, his heart, in her hand.

"I was tired of being a coward," he admitted.

"You were never a coward."

He shook his head. "I could fight. I was a fighter. I was afraid though."

"Of what?"

"Of you. It's why I always let Jin take care of you. I was afraid of what you made me feel. I watched though, and I hated him for the closeness you two shared."

She stayed silent, not speaking from the confession of and what it meant to her. As a girl, she had loved Jin. Loved him in a girl's way, of innocent feelings. Now, with Mugen, Fuu knew it wasn't a girl that wanted him to stay, but it was the girl in her, the brutalized and scarred girl, that was afraid of letting him stay.

Mugen grasped her hand in his, so tightly that she thought she might have bruises when he released. He stared at her, his eyes more serious than she'd ever seen.

"Can I stay?"

Fuu watched his eyes, and felt the small vibration in his hand. More than that, she felt the heat of him, the presence that calmed the girl inside her. Damn the consequences.

"Yes."

* * *

_**Fin

* * *

**_

_Retrospective_

"You're my joy and you're my pain."

It's a line from a song called "Don't Explain" which I listened to while I wrote this chapter. In my mind, this chapter, and the story itself, was supposed to have a slow, but steady rhythm to it. Very blues-y versus the fast-paced hip hop beat that the actual series had. (The version of "Don't Explain" I listened to was sung by Damien Rice, who I recommend to everyone. He's the only person I listen to when I'm writing mellow stories or am feeling mellow...just FYI)

I enjoyed writing this story. Very much so. I took my time with it, and I think I did a great job of getting on paper what I actually wanted and envisioned. While I included Jin, the story was really about Mugen and Fuu.

It was also about change. The change from child to adult, the change those three years can brought, the change that a child can bring. I've read a lot of stories where, no matter how many years later it is that the trio reunites, they're always the same. Almost exactly, but I never could see that happening. After the journey the three of them took, and the climactic ending, there was really no way they could go and be the same.

In the finale, the very last scene, as they say goodbye, if you look at Fuu you can see her change already. This journey has taken something from her, in my opinion, part of her innocence. She's confronted the "demons" of her past, and she's grown up because of it. She was afraid to let Jin and Mugen go much the same way a child is afraid to put away the safety blanket. She forced herself past it, and was better for it. Older, wiser, and just a little bit tainted by the entire experience.

With Jin and Mugen, you have to imagine their changes, all of them except for one. They didn't lose anything in the journey; on the contrary, they gained something. The series is based in an era where the samurai no longer have anything to fight for, and Fuu gave them something. She gave them the cause they both needed, however much they griped and bitched about it. When the trio separated, the two men found themselves with their own journeys. They needed to find something to fight for, for themselves. They needed a cause.

The problem in my story is that three years later they still have not found something to fight for. They fell into the old pattern of fighting for Fuu, but Fuu no longer needed them to fight for her. She had no problem that they could solve. Jin, I believe, realizes this and it's why he left. If this story had gone on longer, I'd have brought him back with Shino, but he'd have faded to the background and would have no longer been important. I never could write Jin that well anyways.

Mugen, however, needs something to fight for. He always did. There's something in Mugen that always reminded me of a broken child, one who missed some integral part of childhood and is forever damaged because of it. Maybe he was an orphan or was abused, but whatever it was, it shows in his character. In my story, I made up my own story for his childhood, and to me it seems likely. You don't get that apathetic about life in general if you've not had a reason to become numb. Mugen, before he met Fuu, was numb. It's like seeing with colors, you can, but where's the fun?

There's what he decides to fight for in the end. He fights to find color, and feeling. After three years apart, he'd finally matured enough to realize that Fuu gives him those things. What was once a childish crush has blown into full-on love, for both of them.

le sigh I hope I've explained some things for everyone.

I can tell you, that I'm planning a couple of one-shots, mostly prequel, and one sequel. One to focus on Mugen's incarceration, one on Fuu during pregnancy, and the last one to wrap up the Jin thing. So...you've got something to look forward to.

For music references, last chapter was mainly written to the song "Then Go" sung by Damien Rice with help of Lisa Hannigan. For this chapter, like I said mainly "Don't Explain" by Damien, but also the very good song "Insane" by Damien. All three compliment this chapter if anyone is interested in DLing them and listening to it while you read.

I thank all my reviewers and the 60 alerts that I got on this story. You've all been very good to me, and very patient. I hope we all enjoyed this.


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